The First Order
by AGreatUnkindness
Summary: A history of the first Order of the Phoenix and the death of Auror Dorcas Meadowes. OC's and book canon spoilers.
1. Prologue

Philippa waited until the man was gone from the street. She walked backwards from the window and even though she bumped into a table on her way to the kitchen and even though she was alone she still stood still at the noise she had made and continued to stare at the front door, her eyes darting to the window. When she reached the kitchen, she opened a small side door and crouched to get in the small space. She moved a small slide out of the way and behind it a small landing in front of a staircase. She squeezed herself through and moved as silently as she could through the old creaky building. The stair opened up to a catwalk and the backs of other small doors that she knew had long been sealed on the occupants' side. She rapped on one of the doors and made her way through without waiting for an answer. She found herself in a cozy carpeted room all dark burgundy and light wood and light streaming into the attic room. She padded through the room reflexively pulling a cobweb out of her way even though the path had been clear and there were no spiders that made their way there. She cleaned the way herself. She maintained the way herself. She felt at home in the old woman's house and made a small call so as not to startle her. They had agreed the way would be used for emergencies.

The old woman making tea in her own kitchen stood still to listen. The girl. She pulled out another teacup. She knew the house sounds before the door opened upstairs. She knew the difference between a cat and something several times its side. When Philippa cleaned she was less careful and quiet but Robin didn't think it necessary to tell the girl that. She had lived here long enough to know also, that the other tenants would chalk the noise up to old house sounds like the marbles in the pipes, the creaking, the yawning in the walls from a tired frame. She didn't hear the faint click of the door or Philippa's footsteps but a small whistle as if from a bird. A small, high-pitched, faint tremolo. By the time the girl started descending the carpeted stairs the old woman was passing with a teacup looking up curious.

"I thought I might have heard a nightingale," She said chuckling. "Tea?"

"Sorry," the girl said. "I didn't want to startle you,"

She wasn't really a girl the old woman observed. But then the old woman wasn't really old, she thought. The landlady knew someone might come for Philippa again. When she rented the flat, Robin sensing she had one last question, opened her small, warm landlady face and asked patiently if there was anything else Philippa would be needing to let the flat. "Doors", the girl had said unflinching. It had startled the landlady. Philippa would have said it eventually, she had had too. She could fake the length of a stay, she thought but, Robin had let rooms and flats and houses her entire life. She knew what a woman running away looked like. She knew a patchwork renter's history when she saw one. She called the other references. All on time but broke every lease. Every single one of them and over such a short period of time. The next time Philippa came back, Robin asked and the woman told her. Not everything she was sure but it took her back all the same. It startled her, the woman's candor and resolve and that she could articulate what the problem was. Either she didn't recognize how disarming it was or didn't care or was sick.

"The doors. What did you mean, doors?" Robin asked.

"To get out of. Like a door," Philippa replied flatly.

Robin could sense the woman's sarcasm even as she told the landlady, not in so many words, that she needed to run away but something about Philippa reminded Robin of a younger version of herself or rather, the person she had always imagined she could become: clever and unafraid.

Anyways, Robin had always been told that crazy people didn't have a sense of humor so she let Philippa the flat. The woman stayed and when Robin was certain, she showed Philippa the path on her move-in date.

"All the others were bricked up. You can check if you like but you'll see once you get inside. This flat and mine were left."

Robin started talking about her life as a little girl. Her parents had acquired a flat for sale in those days which was unheard of at the time. In England? Her mother worked at the resorts and knew that the white man selling it was trying to drive down housing prices when other Jamaicans moved in. Robin's mother didn't care and neither did her father and so they purchased the flat that Philippa would let and then the one next to it and the next until they owned the entire building. The white man who sold it could then buy the buildings next to it when the property value sank and in less than a generation, the property value would go back up and he could resell those same buildings for an unreal sum. Philippa listened impassive. Her face still. The landlady assumed she was boring the woman and stopped mid-sentence.

"Go on," Philippa said.

"Oh, well, then they…" Robin had lost her train of thought.

"The London flat". Philippa said.

"Well," the landlady went on tentative, looking to the floor and Philippa for reassurance and instead was met with her stillness. Robin thought she droned on as she got to how her parents acquired so many more places. Rented out just for blacks originally but then someone kicked up a fuss as if anyone else but the islanders had been knocking down the doors and her parents had barred anyone for renting in the first place. Robin wrang her hands together. Philippa's expression didn't change. It was made all the stranger by the men moving the woman's furniture in. They were standing in the kitchen making a soft commotion all around. When one would ask Philippa a question she would answer without changing expression directing them through a home she'd never been in as if she had lived there the entire time. That she was listening to everything around her at once and had divined the very essence of the flat and the people in it at the time. Robin felt as if she had bored the woman long enough and that Philippa would rather unpack in her stoic peace and yet when the landlady paused in a strange place or made to leave Philippa urged her on.

It made the landlady nervous and she found it off-putting but reminded herself that Philippa was running away after all. Or maybe not. It crossed Robin's mind that Philippa might be the problem in whatever story she did not tell the landlady but brushed the thought aside. She continued her story getting to the part where she was finally old enough to have her own place.

"Well anyway, my parents moved to live where my flat is now and I lived here." Philippa smiled and nodded.

The woman nodded. Philippa had heard this story somewhere before, that's how the she acted. Maybe the old woman had told it already but when? Maybe she was getting old. They were sitting in silence now. The movers getting things placed upstairs. The sound of the heavy feet something the landlady could focus on. She smiled at Philippa less assured. Robin felt like somewhere a clock was ticking at an unnaturally high volume.

"When they leave, the door?"  
"Yes!" the landlady said too cheerful given the quietness that sat in front of Philippa's question. Robin was just thankful to have a reason to make a noise, some evidence that she was still alive and hadn't slipped into death and that the remainder of eternity wasn't just sitting here in silence forever.

This felt very familiar. Robin had a tenant not unlike this one. Several. As she got older, she managed her parents' properties and met many tenants off their rocker. This one paid in coins or tried to barter in bread knuckles, this one hit his wife, this one cooked cat meat said this nosy neighbor whose cat was missing but also who cooked food that smelled like it might have been cat meat... Robin had heard it all, seen it all, fixed so much of it and it shocked so many people to learn that this small woman managed the properties and even owned some of her own. The old woman sighed.

"I'll be back later to show you though I cant go in myself anymore." she smiled as much to herself as to Philippa. I am old. This is a little girl, Robin thought. The Philippa nodded and ushered Robin to the front door.

"Until then," said Philippa who stood at the door as if she would shut it even as the movers brought in the remainder of her things.

When the landlady looked behind her Philippa was gone from the doorway. Robin looked at the expanse of the flat and walked to her own from the outside. When she got back she padded up the stairs. Everything still there she snorted. Still the same place, the same warmth, the same smell. She inhaled deeply and went upstairs, opened the door to the attic upstairs and checked the door. Still closed. She slowly crouched down and opened the door peering in and looked both ways. Same as ever. A little dusty but overall ok. She smoothed a cobweb out of her hair as she went back into the room. Robin sat on the floor cross legged. Since she wasn't thinking about it, she got up much smoother than she got on the floor in the first place. She straightened her skirt with a mission on her mind. She went to the drawer and pulled out a set of keys of the many, went back to the little door and locked it for the first time in a very long time. She would visit the girl tomorrow and let her know about the door in her kitchen. She would let her know about the path to her flat and her door and listen and decide and compose herself before hand. She would be prepared and not look like a little, old fool next time. Would she tell Philippa about the war years, the old, old war years when they built flats like this so that neighbors could hide in the walls and- no. Robin was old but, also knew that, for all those years, some people were younger but had lived more, so to speak. She would leave her encyclopedic knowledge of crawl spaces and wars and architecture and property law out of it. And they would go from there.

***

Robin went to the kitchen to grab the second cup of tea and went upstairs to sit in the small attic room with the young woman. She set the teacup on the table and stirred her own, sipping quietly. By now she was used to this girl and her quietness.

"My friend has died," Said Philippa in the same even tone she used when she first met the landlady.

The old woman's heart lurched. It wasn't fair but it was life. Young people died young too.

"I knew but someone just came with the news. This was the emergency." Philippa drew in deep measured breaths into her nose before folding over.

If Robin hadn't been that old she might not have been able to tell that Philippa was crying at all. When Philippa finally looked up at the ceiling wiping her eyes, the only evidence that she had been crying were her red eyes and sniffling her voice remained strangely even, even monotone. Of course her friend's death was bad but what did that mean she already knew? Robin wondered. Of course, that wasn't the emergency. The landlady asked Philippa is she was safe. Philippa breathed and said nothing but they both knew she heard. When the landlady was about to set the teacup down, Philippa said, yes, she thought so.

"I think, maybe, I might be now. Maybe I was never in danger to begin with." She turned to look at the window over her landlady's shoulder and smiled in a far off absentminded way. "Thank you." said Philippa.

They made their way down the stairs in Robin's home, Philippa carrying a cup of tea she hadn't sipped from and left it in the kitchen. Robin walked her to the front of the door. Philippa looked both ways as she crossed the street and it was now the landlady who stared out of her window. The woman did not ever speak to her more than fifteen minutes ever again. For Robin's part, how would she have known that Philippa had locked the door on her side again? For Philippa's part she crossed the street thankful that someone had asked her a question she was afraid to ask herself and that she answered and believed what she had said. Maybe she had never been in danger at all. In any case she no longer believed she was now.


	2. Chapter 1

Dorcas and Basil made every effort not to run up the street. Dorcas especially had confused many people in her time. You could not tell that her strides were that much longer than her height should have allowed and yet she always seemed to arrive slightly earlier than everyone else even if they started from the same place at the same time. That mixed with the determination of ensuring her friend was safe resulted in her skip walking just short of running made Basil, whose stride did match his height, winded in an effort to match her speed. Even as Dorcas pushed open the back gate she heard a glass break, exploding loudly and then, after mere seconds it took to orient herself, heard another. She broke into a run in the backyard and watched as the back window burst again and repair itself. The shards pieced themselves together as if pulled by tiny threads back into place until they cracked and burst Basil caught up to Dorcas looking back and forth from the window and door assessing what was happening and what she might do about it.

"Me," Basil huffed.

Dorcas looked at him, her eyebrows knit on her forehead, irritated and still very much confused.

"In case intruders. Magic." Huff. "Alarm."

She understood and approached the house with greater resolve. She and Basil went up the small steps and Dorcas raised her wand unlocking the door as it swung open silently into a dark kitchen. They both went through the kitchen and to the hallway where she motioned for Basil to go upstairs. She had done this many, many times before but this felt different. Her training prepared her for a great many things and as confident as she was in her own skill and the training she received to use counter spells, offensive and defensive strategies, all of it, she realized that she was getting weaker. Something in Dorcas now was already failing her. She flinched at the bloom of clean, bluish light that reflected on the glass in the picture frames. She hadn't even noticed how dark it was until the light disappeared completely up the stairs with Basil holding his wand aloft and she squeezed her eyes shut to adjust her eyesight to the dark again. She could have walked in that house blindfolded if she wanted to. She felt ill. Her outstretched arm felt heavy as she rounded the corner to her left into the sitting room passing what looked like a little ceramic volcano puff, puffing away small clouds in sets of twos on the side table in the short hallway. She turned to find her best friend crouched and trembling in the corner and shielding her grandfather who was bunched into the corner but protected on one side by a couch and on the other side an old but well-maintained, upright piano, his granddaughter facing him and telling him that everything was going to be alright. That she wouldn't leave him alone for anything.

"Is there anyone else here?" Dorcas was impressed by the steadiness of her voice and at least seeing Philippa and Grandpa there, some of her focus returned. She could feel the sickness drop away.

Philippa started to hear her friend's voice and slowly looked over her shoulder shaking as she was yet managed to communicate 'no'. Both Dorcas and Philippa turned at the sound of Basil barreling down the stairs, the wand still lit as Philippa and Dorcas squinted against the brightness. Dorcas gestured at the light switch and the house now was full and bright. Basil went to help Philippa off the floor as Dorcas went through the remainder of the house. She could have cast a spell to reveal anyone else's presence but used the time to steady herself. The hand not carrying the wand placed on her breastbone, steadying herself from the inside. Back in the sitting room, she found all of them sitting on the couches. Philippa with her head resting against the wall, eyes closed and breathing deeply. Basil rubbed his face with both hands as if rinsing the exertion off of himself. He would not be an Auror, he decided that evening. Grandpa, sitting next to his granddaughter smiling softly as if nothing had happened at all. Dorcas went to get some water. She hadn't thought to check the fesfium but it confirmed that there were only two wizards in the house. She sent a quiet spell into the house behind her to determine that she was right and when she was certain Dorcas dropped her arm holding what felt like a wand made out of lead and gold and every elephant that ever existed.

She brought the glasses and a pitcher of water into the room.

"Grandpa," she raised her voice slightly, "Everything is fine. We're all safe. Here's some water,"

Philippa winced.

"Can you do something about the glass?"

Dorcas looked at the pitcher on the table and then heard it again. Dorcas hadn't even noticed, it had become background noise. Dorcas motioned for Basil to go to the kitchen and left Philippa on the couch with grandpa who was now leaning against the wall too. From where Dorcas stood she could not see that Philippa and Grandpa were holding hands and because Philippa's eyes were still closed and her head still tilted back against the wall, no one, regardless of where they were standing could see her tears cycling themselves under her eyelids.

"I thought it would be a good idea, a way to let Pippa know when someone magical came into the yard." Basil said in between muttering a spell.

"Good idea, just next time warn me about it, please," Dorcas said, her eyebrows going up to emphasize the point.

Basil shook his head up and down knowing there would not be a next time. Dorcas had been kind enough to take him on "assignment" and his nerves still weren't settled. He had no choice that he was alive during a war but he had a choice to be an Auror and no, thank you. He wasn't too proud but he was too frazzled to mention that his own spell had unnerved him. The loudness of it. Even as the window sat repaired, a still pane, he half expected it to shatter again. If he felt that way, he could not imagine how Philippa must have felt. Basil could do magic and she could not. He had not considered what it meant for a window or anything else to do that and not be able to do much else and it made him sick to think if it hadn't been them. Dorcas seemed to hold up better but she did this for a living. He could tell she was irritated though.

"You are free to go, Basil. Thank you. Please tell Lupin I'm staying here tonight."

Basil felt relieved that he didn't have to stay in the house with the loud windows and the uncertainty. What had made them go there anyway? Just recently it had been such a cozy home and now it seemed empty and eerie. Dorcas watched Basil shut the door behind him.

When Dorcas got back to the sitting room she saw Philippa talking to grandpa from across the coffee table picking up after the dishes Dorcas had just brought in.

"Basil's left," Dorcas said.

"Help me get him upstairs?"

Dorcas shook her head and with a flick of her wand grandpa lifted into the air gentle as a sheet of paper. He started to laugh. Dorcas smiled despite herself. She could feel Philippa looking at her but didn't turn to face her. She walked behind Grandpa who floated up the stairs still laughing. He motioned towards the bathroom door and she sat him gently there closing the door with another small flick of her wrist. When she heard a flush she turned on the water, he washed his hands and he floated out of the bathroom laughing all the while. Dorcas now felt better. Grandpa loved magic. Loved it. And she didn't have to do anything too showy either. In his bedroom she turned her back and with another wave he was changed into fresh pajamas and tucked in bed all of this in a matter of minutes. Grandpa was in peels now, showing his sparse but still strong, white teeth. She turned at the door.

"Goodnight Grandpa. I love you."

"And oo, Dodie," he said and made a little kissing noise after. She could here him snuggling down for the evening and laughing to himself as she went out of the room.

"Crack the door," Philippa called from the bottom of the stairs. Dorcas went down the stairs in two's well pleased with herself.

"Can you sleep here tonight?"

"That was my plan," said Dorcas.

"Are you hungry?"

"No. Are you? I can cook."

"No!" Rounded Philippa and they both laughed even as Dorcas sensed that something wasn't quite right.

Philippa went about setting the water cups and pitcher away, the blanket that had slipped from Grandpa's lap when Dorcas levitated him folded over the back of a chair. Without turning around even as she set the dishes away Philippa asked,

"When we were little, there was a man who sold popsicles down the street from here. What did we call him?" Philippa was moving rather slowly and what a strange question to ask thought Dorcas.

"Ice Pickles? No, Sock Pickles! It was Sock Pickles!" Dorcas hadn't thought of it in so long! Sock Pickles! "Why?", she asked.

Dorcas sensed Philippa relax. She inhaled and exhaled deeply, as if a switch was turned, she moved at regular speed again.

"Sock Pickles, yes. That was it." Philippa nodded to herself and turned with a smile to face Dorcas. "I had forgotten. Help me put this away and then we can go to sleep."

"Enough excitement for one night," said Dorcas. Philippa smiled an automatic, smile. A smile that didn't reach her eyes. Dorcas thought nothing of it, it had been a long night. But everything was fine; they were all fine after all. They tidied the kitchen went upstairs and got ready for bed.

It wasn't until Philippa tucked into her bed on one side of the wall and Dorcas in her bed at the other that Philippa started to say "the lights". By the time she finished the words, they were all already turned off and shortly after saying goodnight, Dorcas was sound asleep. It was as if she had not, even a few hours ago, made herself sick with worry at what she might (or might not) find when she arrived. She was asleep as if she did things like this everyday.


	3. Chapter 2

The birthday party had not only gone off without several incidences but even better than expected. Everyone there had all treated Philippa like their own friend and not the friend of a friend that she actually was to most of them. And while Dorcas did have some reservations once the event was underway, she realized she had had nothing to worry about at all and that Philippa would have fit right in, and did, muggle or not. The morning of their sort of, almost annual birthday party found Philippa more used to the little puffs of odorless smoke popping up from what looked like a little volcano. She was less afraid of the fusfium now and a good thing, since when the party was underway, with all the wizards and witches in attendance, it could no longer chug away in regular intervals and just streamed a thin line of what looked like steam. It made her less nervous now even as she thought she shouldn't get too comfortable with the small device. So far it had only meant new friends and loved ones were near. That a good time was soon approaching or that she would learn something exciting and wild and different.

She was not a jealous person but this was as close to jealousy as she would ever get. She thought with great reverence of all things things Dorcas could do but at the party she had learned more and seen more than ever. A comfort and fluency with magic like it was the plainest thing in the world (and according to Lydia, drunk and getting steadily grumpier over time, magic really was ordinary if you could do it).

Philippa had been to a fair once and had seen a magician. Even as she learned he might have been an actual wizard, what he had done had been total nonsense. In fact, she was certain he hadn't been a real wizard at all. She was certain that Dorcas could move the entire house if she wanted to, just lift it in the air and set it in one quiet piece in a field somewhere or maybe the bottom of the ocean. So far she had made pots and pans fly mostly for Philippa's pure astonishment. For her wide-eyed disbelief. Philippa still waved her hands under floating objects expecting to feel a string or something to hold the object up. She reached out her hand to touch what she once believed were common objects as if to touch a wild but gentle animal. Now a wisp of cloud, now floating in mid air. Did Lupin say that some could be turned into animals? Philippa had declined the demonstration. No, no she didn't want a dish spoon with a tail to squirm away from them to be found slinking in the dark months later and yet…

"A bird? From what?!" She looked around, it seemed they were always in the kitchen then months before everything happened at once, the table covered in notes and books and according to everyone who saw her sitting there while they read, violating every law across the two communities.

"What happens if you violate the statute of secrecy?" She asked Lupin.

"Why are you whispering?" Dorcas retorted who made no effort to conceal her laughter at Philippa's sincerity and fear.

But Dorcas didn't seem to care nor did Lupin, apparently, who brought her all the books he could find or, what did he say? Spirit away. After a time she didn't care either and built up a nerve and curiosity to actually see the magic itself. She could read it, imagine it but here were two capable wizards, why not? What was the harm, really? Surely between them and Fabian they could find a fork-cat wherever it squeezed itself into hiding.

"Throw it into the air," Philippa dared him.

The bowl, before her very eyes, turned into a bird as it fell through the air. Righting itself before it hit the ground and lifting its plain, regular, grey, bird wings.

The bird sat on the edge of the table and turned back into its blue bowl self with hardly a twist of Lupin's wrist.

"Unreal," she whispered to herself.

Lupin enjoyed this more than wandering wherever it was he liked to wander. Well, not more more. He enjoyed that he could do this, impress someone. Especially since the person he most wanted to move and shock was so cavalier about so many things. Philippa and her endless, observant questions that turned into insights she gleaned from her study. He liked testing her ideas. Could that happen? Why hadn't he thought of that? And Dorcas correcting some of his technique. He had never wanted to be an Auror but he appreciated that he could learn something too. Mostly though, he love that the Groves's felt like a proper home. He enjoyed being in a warm house where no one asked him about moon cycles and questioned his bottomless hunger. Philippa really could cook and plied him with dishes and showed that she appreciated him being able to find so many exotic ingredients and they had reached an understanding between them a combination of learning and cooking and him reading to Grandpa Groves from the newspaper and having a backyard to sleep in. Philippa chalked up this behavior to some wizard behavior or convention that she was sure he would explain in time as she gazed out of the window for the upteenth time after she saw a single puff of smoke emanating from fusfium and a tap, tap, tapping on the window signaling that Lupin was making himself comfortable in the yard. She explained that it would be no problem for him to sleep in Dorcas's bed or on the couch but he insisted. She didn't press the point. Frankly she had seen stranger things and some part of her just believed that her desire to be around magic must be matched by his apparent need to live like a muggle hobo. She shrugged going through the house and went to sit in the living room to play piano for Grandpa before bed.

On days when Lupin did stay in the house and they made something of a family, he could show Philippa magic and sensed the unfairness of it, that she gave more than he could give her. After months of studying, Philippa's command of the language and theory of magic increased exponentially. There was a time when he could bring a book and it took her time to understand what the words and ideas in those books meant and at the height of this study, she could polish off several books in a matter of weeks. The line of questions became more obscure, the theory more difficult so that he deferred to Dorcas who later had to defer to Alastor or Kingsley and it went in a massive circle and star all of them collecting information on magic they had never heard of, that they had never thought of doing because they didn't even know if it was possible. She could not do the magic that she dreamt up, magic that she knew so well but, even still he noticed, that the small feats never tired. It was especially this little magic that amused and shocked Philippa the most. The little ceramic chimney did not impress her, the tales of werewolves, Dorcas noticed Lupin developed a coughing fit upon Philippa asking details of magical creatures, were worth only passing commentary.

"Indeed," Dorcas said moving in and out of the kitchen taking care of grandpa. "Water, Remus?"

Philippa yawned through tales of great duels.

"I'm sure it was beautiful in person," interested but unmoved.

It was this, young magic, magic that even little kids could do that made her eyes sparkle. Dorcas for her part was impressed to find that Philippa was the same as she had always been with her nose literally so far in a book that Dorcas convinced herself that Philippa was exaggerating that she couldn't see the words an-

"Glasses! Thats why you've always read like that!" Dorcas exclaimed one day.  
"Why didn't you just say something."

Dorcas drew circles around her friends eyes and said something. What had she said? Philippa felt her eyes squidge in her head and enormous pressure baring down on her forehead and almost on the brink of closing her eyes, the pressure vanished.

"There! I'm not a ward sister but I think that should do it. Is it better?"

And Philippa for the first time in a long time could make out the drawn expression on Dorcas's face.

"Well?", Dorcas pursed her lips and Philippa could see, from where she sat that Dorcas hoped she accomplished the thing she had. She could see the print on the blouse her shirt was held up and rotated her hand and saw the shape of her own fingernails at reasonable fingernail size which is to say at arms length and just unbelievable. She could have cried but was too shocked. She could see Dorcas smile at her and exaggerated nod and then draw her hand across her forehead wiping mock sweat off of her brow.

"Whew! Not to bad for intention, investment, intonation," Dorcas said.

Philippa's eyesight improved at the same time that their knowledge of magic was really taking off. She read about much more in those books and faster. Bones turned to jelly and elongated and frozen at a greater length, A series of incantations to set ceilings on fire from the inside, to block out this, to keep this in and dragons? Real ones?

"Of course," said Dorcas.


	4. Chapter 3

Dorcas derived great joy watching Philippa read these books like they were fairy tales of which they were to her. How would she find a way for her to actually see a dragon in real life? Dorcas wondered. Philippa pieced together words and ideas and shapes and histories. She developed a working knowledge of the things she couldn't use in her own life that were simple to others and literally impossible for her. She began to speak a language with no practical implications to herself.

"Can you make them up too? Spells, I mean.," Philippa said one day without looking up from her notes on her right hand side and writing without looking at the paper on her left. A book with a bowl full of untouched stew used as a weight to keep the pages open. Lupin looking at the stew with longing.

She had always been the far superior student, Dorcas knew. If they had both attended Hogwarts, Dorcas might not even be an auror now. Everyone would have just considered Dorcas to be Philippa's competent but uninspired friend. She could keep pace, memorize, even think on her feet in her way. As it stood, she was one of the better in her class and certainly one of the greatest of the seventh years at the time but, that was only because Lydia had left school early. How unjust that she had everything she wanted but wasn't the more creative of the two, the funnier or more charismatic or kinder? That she only had this gift because of foolish luck?

"These two can you mix them together? And these, could you make one that makes this spin and that leap and that soar at the same time?"

That's how Philippa and Lupin met. Dorcas's potions skills, remained largely underutilized and Dorcas called him in and he had turned into Philippa's tutor of sorts. All of these questions, hours worth, where they would sit and talk about this and that and it got the better of him as it had of Dorcas earlier. He had to try himself. Could these two spells be said at the same time? Can you make that paper burst into flames and float at the same time though? The end result isn't the point, it's the idea! Exasperated Philippa looked over at Dorcas her expression saying, why doesn't he get it? He found he could not do both simultaneously as Dorcas had tried alone so as not to embarrass herself and she too had tried and failed and it was like this with many, many more combinations and spells and ideas until she resolved to practice like she had done in training and found that, this is a muggle equivalent, it was not unlike singing while playing the guitar with both hands while shaking someone's hand with a third. The intention changed in a way and from then on she sat at the table and listened to Philippa's ideas and got over the embarrassment of not being able to do and she failed, Merlin's beard did she ever fail, until she could do a great deal of what Philippa dreamt up and several more that she could not do.

Dorcas thought sometimes that it may frustrate her. That Philippa couldn't do these things herself. That she had to watch other people try and fail and try and fail again knowing that if she had just a little bit of what they had, just a little bit of it, she could have accomplished everything sooner and more elegantly and developed more besides. Instead Dorcas, now long over her fear of being made a fool of in front of someone she had looked foolish in front of several hundreds of times before, tried.

"Does your wrist need to be held differently, it says here that…"

When she finally got it, there was no trace of resentment or impatience or envy. Just her friend pleased and awed, shaking her head silently and smiling, almost to herself only "unreal".

At this party though, her awe extended to the magic she read about that could not have been done in the comfort of the kitchen and dining space in the house that they had grown up in. The childlike magic that Lupin did, the combination spells that Dorcas tried. IT was at this party that she witnessed what she read about in some other radical form that made her suddenly interested in the tales of duels. Philippa herself had walked though a fire drawn at the edge of the door. A great blue flame that reached the top of the door frame and walked though it and nothing happened. Not nothing, how would she describe it? Nothing that a fire could do happened. And it was blue. So it must have been hotter, burning something else, she knew. She had heard pieces of conversations and places and people and things she had never read about. She could admit to herself that some of this magic was becoming commonplace, by my goodness. She could really put her knowledge to use. Combined with the new letters from Lydia (who remained unmoved by Philippa's insistence that they be sent by owl as the Royal Mail had always been and would continue to be faster) and sitting and talking with Lupin who brought the books and the notes and the plants? She reached a type of nirvana and comfort at that party. She had finally found her people. A comfort in her own home and in herself. Who would have known? A witch who couldn't do magic. And then she met a kid named Peter, one of Lupin's friends and they spent time discussing very obscure magic. He could answer some of the questions she had been waiting on answers for. He promised to find an answer to this problem of the bursting window. A way to communicate with Dorcas, he would find a way to call her if she needed to all in exchange for a to-go plate which she would have given to him anyway. And while the party had been beautiful, she hadn't noticed the time passing speaking with him, he had been a complete delight and a sweetheart. Since he had shown up empty handed, he would send a gift through Lupin, he promised, but he had only meant to pass through and got distracted. He had given her the best gift of his complete attention and seriousness to finding a solution to a problem that had been bothering her and she felt a deep fondness for someone whom she had just met.

Sirius? Sirius, right? Lupin's other friend who brought the wine which couldn't be refilled (this was not a foreign concept to Philippa but seemed to confuse many wizards and witches in attendance) made from some berry that she had enjoyed and enjoyed some more. Who else? Lydia and the Prewett's were there of course. Lupin was there. Basil came with a bouquet of roses looking very sheepish but relaxed over time. He too enjoyed the wine. And she finally met Alastor and Mr. Shacklebot and even though she had been told that they were very important, she knew right away when they walked in that important people, celebrated people, had walked in for all the side conversations and commotion they caused. Mr. Shacklebot brought a cake and Alastor a broach that she couldn't touch with her bare hands. He remembered that Philippa wouldn't, or rather shouldn't have known what a Duobus Signis was.

"A type of portkey," Philippa said as if reciting from a book. "It has the power to transport to more than one place. Very difficult to make. You need to the incantation to one place and then another set of incantations for the other, it can takes months to make these. Did the Ministry approve?" She said still marveling at what was an otherwise unremarkable, even ugly piece of jewelry.

Dorcas watched Alastor's eyebrows go to together in a type of uncharacteristic confusion. At Philippa's question, his eyebrows had raised even as she answered her own question.

"I can't imagine they would approve but there's no way to monitor the movement of portkeys anyway." She smiled a warm, genuine smile. "Thank you, it's incredible."

She closed the lid and Alastor regaining enough composure to return the kindness. He looked at Dorcas and she looked like the hippogriff that ate the bezoar, a sly, impressed smile. Philippa, a muggle had caught the great Alastor Moody off-guard. So much for constant vigilance. I'll tell you later she said as Philippa was called away to impress and stun and laugh and dance and become everyone's new best friend and be loved by everyone there. Alastor nodded. He would not hear the end of this. "It is an incredible gift," Dorcas said trying not to laugh but also meaning it but also knowing that he was trying to cover his surprise at who he had been told was a muggle-born muggle. Dorcas was impressed by her friend and proud.

All of these strangers had come to the birthday party and she thought then that they had left as friends. It had been such a good time and Philippa could forget about what happened before and relax and enjoy herself. The memory, the memories were tucked away in the back of her mind but they slept undisturbed as she bounced through the party with Dorcas. Even after she thought of it, which was rarely, it seemed so far away and receded farther away in time but, when she did even after everything that happened, that would happen, she reveled in the memory of the event and the magic of it all. Ha.


	5. Chapter 4

She had been given specific instructions not to trust anyone from her world who didn't know either of their "real names". The irony being that these were the nicknames they had given one another a long time ago when they were young. When, at that age, Philippa recognized they shared last names related to plants and green, growing things. They had built a sort of club with an exclusive, lifetime membership of only two. To get into this club, the only qualifications were that you had to be one of them and your favorite children's radio program had to be White Roses. This made membership easy. She had once been called Petal and her best friend, Tulip. And when they were much older and Tulip had told her, don't trust any of us, not even me, unless they know your real name Petal understood in a deep place and it made her sick to think that there would ever be a need for those names to be referenced and especially in this way. All of this was really happening and, of all of the trouble they had found themselves in over the years, that this was the most real, that one of them may never hear the other's voice or see the other ever again and it would be both a relief and a horror. The family down the street that had disappeared in the papers? That was us, Tulip said. It wasn't you, Petal said. What sat in the air between them was the rest of her question, was it? Was it you? Did you, specifically have anything to do with them? No, it wasn't me, me but it was us. Dorcas said out loud because they had known each other that long and they could have had this entire conversation silently and often did. One or the other would answer questions that hadn't been asked a loud disarming anyone in earshot. The conversation would become silent again neither of them realizing the conversation wasn't being spoken out loud in the first place.

She had not noticed him behind her for almost two blocks now, which is not to say she didn't sense him, but she had felt like this on and off for months now in varying degrees and it was much better than it had been now. She had half a mind to turn around and that same moment she heard, not just her name but, two of them. The first time he had called her by her common nickname. Everyone knew she had called her that and she knew not to turn around but, did anyway. She found a tall man just off the sidewalk directly behind her closer than his voice had sounded. She impressed herself. She knew she did not look as startled as she felt. She turned around as if by coincidence, as if she had just turned around at any number of noises in the street and not her own name but her steps slowed conscious of the very real danger of this man who had magic or not. She squared her hips, laced her keys in her fingers and, if necessary, she would stand at her own door and knock, call up to someone who wasn't there and turn around as she had rehearsed in her mind, two times, nine times, thirty times, a hundred times until it looped on itself, tying into a knot. And yet here she was becoming more scared now as she had been then and it was the recognition and blooming fear she felt on her face that she had not practiced or adjusted for. She did not account for remembering. It was that same fear that told the man that he identified the correct woman even as she walked up the steps to her own home. He repeated in a slightly more confident but not threatening way, excuse me, Petal? And if she had understood what happened then, she would also remember that she had turned around and gone down the steps almost floating and even shook the man's hand and that she had made it up the steps again and unlocked her own door and almost ushered that very man through the door until she came back to her senses at the very last moment over the threshold with her hand on the doorknob and her body angled in such a way that she could have slammed the door shut right on his face.

Grandpa, Philippa and Dorcas sat at the table with tea. Philippa's shoulders drooped as she warmed her hands on the tea cup. Lupin kept quiet vigil with his arms crossed pacing in the small kitchen.  
"What did he look like again?" He repeated.  
Dorcas didn't like the way Philippa looked.  
"That's enough questions for the evening. May I please speak with you in private?"

Dorcas's chair scraped the floor that startled none of them. She pulled him into the hallway and glanced over her shoulder to see that Philippa still hadn't moved. She was watching her tea get cold. Grandpa nearly oblivious to the entire scene with a faint smile on his quiet old, sweet face. She turned around completely and told her friend she would be right here, just off to the side and that, in fact, since it was so late that she would spend the night. Lupin started to make an objection and stopped himself. He too, would spend the night. If Dorcas had still been sitting across from her Philippa, she would have seen her close her eyes. From where they stood, Lupin could see past Dorcas's shoulder. Phillipa exhaled deeply, wrapped her hands around the teacup and brought it to her lips to drink.

Philippa trusted her friend then and honored what she had been told. She let the man into her house because he had called her by her real name. He sat at the kitchen table and she made him tea. She would be getting the news finally of what had happened or at least confirmation for what she knew, what she had known all along.

"Your friend, she's gone. She has died".

She knew that. She had not been prepared to finally have those words spoken out loud by a stranger but, she knew. The man was a little confused to notice her reaction.

Still, she said, a sense of formality in her tone "Thank you for letting me know".

He had understood that they had been very close. He decided against telling her what had happened unless she asked. She decided that she did not need to know the details. When it had happened, how. It was all the same now.

"Your home is very cozy." The man said looking around the flat.

"It is." She said looking directly at him.

It was time for him to go but there was something bothering him and she could tell, maybe he wanted to tell her more. She could tell he was determining what to say and how to say it even as he started speaking .

"I don't want to know".

He smiled more to himself. "I don't want to give you any more information than you would like to know or that would take away your peace."

"Thank you."

"If I could ask you? I would like to know one thing."

That evening when she had been sent away, she had been given a long list of instructions. Her going away bag was now several times smaller than when she had packed it herself. She was given instructions on who she could and could not and should not speak to and how to tell all of these people apart but not when the danger would pass. She was not told when and how she would know when the threat lifted and when she could go home or if she ever could. She knew that this was for her own safety. She had reasoned that maybe she would be told by one of these many people. But she knew also that if anything were to ever happen to Dorcas… She understood people's priorities. She understood that she may not be one of those priorities with her friend gone. Many people had however tried to find Philippa precisely for that reason, because they were friends. As it turned out many more people considered Dorcas a friend and that they too honored their friend's instructions.


	6. Chapter 5

Dorcas woke up with a series of knots on the right side of her neck. She had seen a man crack his skull during whichever series of spells that had been cast in his direction. Part of a wall had been torn down and trapped others underneath it and, this time, Alastor had not been there to hold it up. She had seen people die before but not like this. Not this many people at once. No one seemed nearly as disturbed as she felt. She pictured the man falling and that she could hear him even if she would have been too far. The sound of his head hitting the floor. She heard it. Her memory had the right noise at the right place. And the number of people under the wall- She decided fairly early in her training to do more harm than good and this confirmed that choice. She could not live with the idea that she could be so cavalier, so unintentional with her magic. That she would send a spell flying off and hurt someone that way and she didn't have to because she had not. The man floated in the air and Emmeline let him fall. She was already onto the next spell, the next person. It was only the spell that Dorcas cast too late and that someone on the man's side caught his foot and angled his body so he fell with the top of his spine and head hitting the floor first not from a great height but was loud enough for Dorcas to hear from across the hall.

Dorcas went downstairs to find Emmeline eating a jam sandwich and speaking with Edgar at the table.

"Morning." Chipper as she could manage, as if nothing had happened.

"Sleep well did you?" Edgar asked over a plate of late breakfast.

"Not really." Dorcas admitted. The color of the jam made Dorcas crane her neck.

"It will get better," he said. He nodded to emphasize as if her expression had betrayed her. It had. He was talking about the crick in her neck.

He had never experienced this but he saw it in other people. Same with Emmeline. She didn't think ill of Dorcas, though she didn't like her, or even that she wasn't a fighter, she was, she saw it but she worked too much on the defensive. The people they were fighting called for offensive strategy, to be proactive and to approach each event with the same and equal amount of energy, as she had said during a briefing. Dorcas thought the word she had meant to use was violence. She didn't approach to hurt anyone, Emmeline claimed when one of these briefings had devolved, as they more recently had, into loud shouting matches. Sirius and her at each others throats. Sirius being the only one who disliked her for the same aristocratic upbringing that he himself had. Emmeline insisted that the point was always to disarm or slow down the opposing side but Dorcas witnessed as much "energy" from her as anyone else. She witnessed a man lose consciousness, his coat collar squeezing at his neck, blocking his inability to say the counterspell to let him loose. A piece of window flying at a foul speed lodged in someone's chest that insisted, by magic, that it make it through to the other side of this body which it did until it sought out another and then another. Then this. This one. Dorcas craned her neck mashing at her shoulder. Edgar gazed at her and felt a deep affection for Dorcas. She really was sweet. He continued to look at her standing there, her very obvious desire to just be around other people as a distraction while she gazed into the air not paying attention to anything in particular still trying to fix the soreness in her neck and her neck getting more sore for her trouble. He went back to his meal, smiling at his food. Emmeline caught him looking at her. It was a second. It was nothing really. He looked up, smiled and returned to his food smiling even harder.

"Your neck, is it alright?" Dorcas didn't answer. They both looked at her.

"Dorcas," Emmeline said irritated. Edgar looked at her.

She really could be like this sometimes. He knew that and made a type of peace with it. Dorcas looked at them, Emmeline's eyebrows raised in inquisition. Had they said something? She couldn't have told you what it was or how long she'd been standing there.

"Your neck, Dorcas?" Emmeline must have repeated the question. Dorcas nodded and walked away realizing she hadn't actually said anything.

"I'm going to lay down." She smiled in an absent-minded way.

Dorcas bumped into a wall on her way back up the stairs where she went straight to the bathroom. From downstairs, they could hear the sound of the water heater creaking to life refilling the pipes that would fill the tub. After what felt like an hour, Edgar eating slower than usual to not have to meet Emmeline's gaze, the faucet went off. Upstairs the tub had been expanded in several direction so that Dorcas could submerge herself and stare through several inches of water above her.

His plate cleared, nearly licked clean, he looked at Emmeline saddened. And she knew what it meant, what it could mean, that sappy puppy look. Which was absurd! This tall, huge-shouldered, muscular man really had some nerve to allow his face to ever attempt to look like anyone's baby anything! That wouldn't work! Anyway, Dorcas was a damn goody-two robes. She wouldn't dare in a million years and for all the world. Emmeline had half a mind to call her a weakling though she knew it wasn't true. She understood why Alastor and Dorcas got along, they would stop a battle to help the helpless, block or rebound a spell before casting one of their own (she knew that to block a spell one would have to be cast but that was not the point).

Emmeline's mind raced. Churned. Dorcas really hadn't even looked at Edgar like that. She had barely noticed either of them and Edgar's smile had no effect on Dorcas the way it did on h-. Hmm, she thought. Dorcas wouldn't but he very much would. How did she know that? She wondered. She snorted to herself. She looked up to catch him glancing up at her and smiling sweetly and it made her sick and angry.

"Why don't you check on her in the bath? Ask if you can rub her shoulders?" she questioned. His smile widened one side then the other.

"Why would I do that knowing how angry it would make you, my love? Why don't I rub your back instead?" he said in between clearing the table, raising his eyebrows in a rhythm. It made her angrier. He really thinks he is so adorable.

"She's not my type." Edgar said facing the sink, his back turned to Emmeline while he waved his wand to start doing the dishes.

"Which is?" Lies from Merlin's dusty beard! She wanted to see his face when he said that.

"Kind, sweet, easily disturbed…"

"She's a mouse." Emmeline snapped loudly. Dorcas didn't hear her, underwater as she was. Alastor hadn't heard her, on watch as he was. Alice Longbottom, didn't care as pregnant as she felt. Her husband didn't mind as smitten with Alice as he was. Lupin didn't either, sleeping as he was. Sirius had already woken up but planned on insisting on telling her later to not wake the house when she knew how busy it had been for all of them the evening before ready to argue as he was.

Edgar's chuckle caught him off guard. A dish plopped back into the soapy water in the sink. She really was angry. He turned and walked to the table, kissed her on the cheek.

He wouldn't dare.

"I wouldn't dare." he said lowering his voice in earnest and in contrast to Emmeline's voice moments before.

He couldn't. Dorcas didn't look at him twice and she was very easily disturbed, that was true, and his hands were tied, Emmeline made sure of that. Truth was, Dorcas was very much his type but the position had been filled. Emmeline, too, was his type and, well, she wasn't going anywhere and wouldn't let him act up any more than he did. Emmeline would keep him honest, so to speak and they both left the matter at the table and when he said he wouldn't dare, she knew he was telling the truth because for as much as a mouse as she believed Dorcas to be, she knew and saw the day before that she wasn't stupid and, even worse, that Dorcas, fortunately or unfortunately for Emmeline, wasn't at all that desperate.


	7. Chapter 6

He had seen something like this before. Lord Voldemort paced around the room still heated by the fire on the hearth. He was always slightly chilled now. His body temperature needing greater warmth even as his disciples used all sorts of magic to prevent themselves from sweating, to keep themselves composed under the literal heat. That didn't matter so much now. Some of these people could not feel the cold or the heat anymore and would not feel it, or anything else, ever again. He had been angry that time and he somehow contained his anger but what he felt now passed out of time and collected into a deadly rage. I cannot tell you how angry or what the color of it was but the general shape looked like many bodies on the floor. Very many. He had let them fall and fall and fall.

***

He had had to see this for himself. He had paced around the hall as he did this room surveying the wreckage. This one folded under him or herself, this one's bone sticking out of there. Someone would clean it up and it wouldn't be him. He had scrubbed enough floors in his time and coupled with this smell? He hated this smell. That was the worst of all. He could barely think when he first walked in with Bellatrix, Severus and Rozier. It took seeing what happened to refocus his thoughts. This one on the floor with his brains blown out of the back of his head jammy and stinking. There was tile piled on one side of the room. Dorcas had made the floor move under them. Lord Voldemort smiled to himself. They might have slipped, become disoriented but someone had killed this one on the floor on purpose. Who was he? He sustained a low murmur that the four of them ignored. He wasn't dead then? People like this man were making him look bad! What business did this nameless nobody have in this fight in the first place? It could have been anyone responsible for the dozen or so people later pulled out of this hall with its tall ceilings out of the rubble. The muggles' families would have to be alerted. A release for the muggle news. Dorcas had created an environment in which to do all of this. That's what they thought at least. Lord Voldemort knew better. She was hardly the reason all of these people had died and yet for all of this chaos, he recognized that she threatened his plans. That incident earlier had probably made her sick and to the best of his knowledge she had never done anything like it before and had not since. He had ordered that she be brought in then. Yet not one of all the people he had sent on his direct orders had come back with her. He had heard her name several times before that moment but, until then, had no occasion to remember it until one day, for whatever reason, he did.

"That name sounds familiar." He thought, mining his memories and accurately placing its previous uses. He kept hearing her name over again. He heard her first described as "Moody's girl", then "the mudblood" which Severus made a grand show of not doing. Ha! So dramatic. And, very occasionally and briefly, she was referred to by her last name and then finally "the auror". When she died, they had believed the threat had passed. They had even brought out a bottle of a sweet, magical wine from the Malfoy's collection (really, it had most likely come from the Black family as a wedding gift or dowry). Lord Voldemort opened it himself. They believed that he would be happy? What did they think, those who still could, those who were still alive? What did they think would happen?

Severus knew from the very first toast that something would happen and he couldn't wait to witness some people getting their due even as he mapped out a plan of protection in his head. His Lordship insisted on opening the ancient bottle of Satiativa. An ancient vintage. Ancient. This should have tipped them all off but alas. His Lordship had to handle it with a serviette wrapped around the neck of the bottle just so as was tradition, preserving the dust. An empty bottle would cost a small vaults worth of equally ancient currency and he would enjoy the drink immensely. Sip on what only a few wizards could only dream of tasting if they even knew it still existed. It would be a good one. The finest, thinnest stemmed cordial glass appeared in front of each of them at the table. When the cork popped it released not only the pressure in the bottle but the remaining tension in the room. They were safe, they thought, as Lord Voldemort poured into the slightly larger cut glassware in front of himself. The glasses around the table filled simultaneously. He set the bottle down gently. The auror is dead. Dorcas Meadowes is dead. Finally. Severus could feel everything and everyone around him, the relief. He learned long ago that this was a sham of a feeling. He learned a long time ago that an exhalation is done in private, that someone is only safe if they are asleep and sometimes not even then. How do you _really_ know if someone is asleep? How do you know if they aren't just playing dead? Lord Voldemort lifted his glass and all in attendance lifted their glasses in unison. Some people were smiling. Some had tears in their eyes. Joy? Severus looked up at Lord Voldemort from his seat on His right. Regulus across from Severus. Bellatrix diagonal from her nephew, same proximity as Severus but on Lord Voldemort's left hand side.

"A toast!"

There it was. There it was! Severus felt what was a largely imperceptible shift in tone, in inflection. He knew that set-up. He personally had done nothing wrong and he knew his Lordship would not do anything to him but there were reflective surfaces in the room. A spell could bounce off of so many polished things here. Some spells could go through another person and his Lordship was nothing if not precise and elegant but Severus heard it, he felt it. He saw it in his Lordship, he heard it in those two words. Severus could drop under the table and start incantations if he needed to and would explain it away later. But now, he would wait. He would know the time to move. He always knew the time to move, he was still here after all. Still alive.

"A toast to…"

He was angry and here these sops were smiling, grinning away, elated. Maybe Snape wouldn't hide under the table. He might die happy knowing that these half-wits were stripped of their histories. He might enjoy to watch it.

"Regulus!"

Regulus Black inclined his head slightly and slowly as Lord Voldemort enumerated on the toast. He learned fast, Severus had to credit him for that. It never crossed his mind that he was an excellent teacher. That the gesture was copied as Regulus had seen Severus do it. That the gesture, the body language was all Severus.

"To Regulus!" They all affirmed.

They lifted their glasses to sip. And it was perfect. They didn't, they couldn't make anything like this anymore. Severus went through the list of ingredients in his head as he savored the light, green, sparkling sweetness; the slightly, piney astringency. He would be satisfied with the memory of having tasted something, anything with belbarberries. He went over the process for extracting and stilling the juices as described in an old text. The fermentation taking years and the vintage, theorized to be stable forever if made correctly. If not, it could kill a cast of hippogriff dead with a few drops. Those drops were said, per another primary observational text written during the experiments conducted before the ministry existed, even before the " olde vvitch coda", to be so divine, so transcendent that for centuries there was a time when wizards and witches brewed it incorrectly just to taste, just to try it and it was through this that the plant was harvested to extinction and made the correctly prepared wine (really a potion) so rare and expensive. This also wiped out an estimated tenth of England's wizarding population, a point of history still taught, with gusto, in France.

Severus sipped again leaving a remainder and felt the bubbles break up his thoughts and piece them back together in a lighter hue. When he set down his glass again, the goblet portion of the glass filled slowly as did everyone else's at the table according to how much they drank. All of them well-bred, or well-read, enough to know to leave a little left over, that their glass would be refilled from the large bottle at the table if they left a little in their own glasses and when that was gone there would be no more.

Severus knew he would not have to scramble under the table like a fool. Regulus now knew that too. He too could now sense the shift in Lord Voldemort's voice as He raised His glass to toast the next person. And from Severus he knew that he would be safe and spared whatever was approaching in the invisible, blood-filled storm cloud conjured by Lord Voldemort's voice if only he just sat quietly and very still.


	8. Chapter 7

"Tell her. If anything happens to me".

If they weren't direct friends of Dorcas, they were friends of friends of friends who loved the person before them enough to uphold what became a long line of people who needed to pass on the information to a woman named Petal until the line of people became so long that people carrying it did not know or had not been told how important the name was. That calling this woman by this name was crucial information and not a misunderstanding or incidental information. There were a strange number of very skilled, highly trained, over competent wizards and witches who took on the responsibility to find this woman and yet only one had. It was only by coincidence that the man now sitting at her kitchen table had taken it upon himself not out of love for the people around him but as a point of curiosity. Why could they not find this one person? This one person didn't have magic of her own. Or did she? Did she? Why had no one ever considered the possibility? Had they? Yet it was a coincidence, the most common magic, one not under the direct control of wizards, and as unwieldy and unpredictable in the hands of muggles, that he had found her.

Alastor knew that Philippa had the portkey now because Dorcas had told him. He was the second person after Lupin who had been told directly to go find Philippa, in case. Dorcas at this time was avoiding Alastor because he needed her to go into hiding for her safety. That was when it started. No, it actually started sooner than that but she was avoiding him because she didn't want to listen to whatever new argument he had come up with in the space of time that she made herself scarce but this was urgent and important. She told him that she didn't want to discuss anything else but what to do if something were to happen to her. You know what Philippa looks like, she knows you. That she had told Lupin also. Find her and tell her.

Lupin had been told because Dorcas knew then that he had the skill and that he knew all of England's dark and light places. If Lupin couldn't find her, Alastor would but they couldn't. So Lupin told Peter who he knew also loved Philippa and could be trusted and could fit into small places. Alastor told Edgar and both tried until, well. Edgar had told his sister, Amelia who had also been at the party and knew what she looked like, though hadn't stayed long enough to speak with her. After the death of her brother, she became obsessed with trying to find this woman she barely knew and she also told Emmeline who already knew because, of course she did. Emmeline told Kingsley because she didn't have anyone else to tell and Kingsley told Lydia who had been worried since she had stopped receiving letters from Philippa and had her own recent letters forwarded back to her. So she told Prisha who told Daniel. Lydia also told a ward sister at St. Mungo's and that sister told two other people one of whom was actually a sister of the ward sister. And it was through one of these people that he first heard Philippa's name. And then he too, eventually was asked by both Alastor and Kingsley directly which was strange. He found very many people were looking for this woman and he wanted to know why they couldn't find her. He was very busy collecting memories and trying to find a way to win a war that he believed might be unwinnable but something told him to find out why, that this would reveal something to him or not, and he always listened to this voice. It was this same voice that led him to sit through a radio program about a garden of talking flowers years ago that he found delightful. He had stood and listened to the whole program having caught it near the end and then heard it again and this program was a comfort during a particularly exhausting time in his life and this voice told him to find the name of the program and he had forgotten it.

One of these wizards had called the woman before him Dorcas's sister. But Dorcas hadn't any sisters. No brothers. Really, no family to speak of which is what made her good at her job or that's what the rumor was. She had nothing or very little to lose. The woman in front of her being one of them. He had to follow her from work several times. He knew this is where she stayed, he knew that he would have to approach her carefully and as was his way, he spoke to the old channels and also by coincidence and a stroke of luck her old nickname since in another stroke of luck, no one had told him directly to call her Petal. That would have been easy. He didn't like easy. He didn't trust easy. Once a long time ago he thought something could be so simple and it broke what remained of his family and that dovetailed into breaking a lot of other people's homes because of what he thought he understood. Now? There had been a radio playing when he first saw her. She had smiled and hummed along with the tune walking past him from the hospital. She hadn't heard the show in such a long time, neither had he.

Philippa would have pretended to be someone else which in fact happened once. He had called her name and she had pretended she was someone else. Dorcas' instructions were simple. If Philippa didn't recognize the person, they were not to be trusted. If they wore these symbols they were not to be trusted. If they spoke this and on and on and on and since their last meeting to now she had forgotten many of the details and was comfortable now to live, to wander, to be. The threat it appears had passed, until he showed up. She hoped the rest of her life wouldn't be this and them forever. But one cannot not know. Or maybe she could ask this man? How he could not know this information, that they weren't sisters, but know what to call her did not cross her mind. She was aware near the end that Dorcas must be powerful. She witnessed someone half bow to her once on their way out and thought this not only excessive but funny until she learned the details. She always wanted to know the details. Not this time. What she did not know was that this man was also powerful. He was even more skilled than his friend and that was the only reason he was there.

"When did you come back here?" He asked.

This man asked a lot of agitating questions. Hadn't he said he just wanted to ask one question? He sounded like a social worker and this irritated her enough to dull some of her fear and its familiarity compelled her to answer. The social workers at the hospital were worn down but they asked questions to understand so they could help. Maybe he was something of a social worker?

"Months," This is not the answer the man expected, Philippa could tell.

"I thought you said you lived in Ireland."

"No, thats where I was moved, relocated. I might have been there for only a matter of days before I came back into the country." She avoided using the proper terminology. She was tired.

Those days had been very long which accounted for the lapse in her judgement of time. but everyone she was supposed to meet, everyone she encountered did their job. She was fed then moved and then told she could sleep here and move there and take this with you and talk to this person. Days? It had been more than two weeks. Her mind consolidated the time out of necessity. The man asked for more tea and while she had not seen this man take a sip, the cup was empty before she reflexively moved to get more. Instead she stayed seated.

"I know who you are."

"You do?"

"I don't know exactly, but I know what you might be capable of doing and that you don't need me to get a cup of tea, to have my back turned or anything like that, so even though you don't need to tell me I'd like to know why you're here and to tell you to leave." Everything Philippa said came out in one long sentence.

The man smiled, "I'm not here to hurt you." He replied.

"That's not what I said." Philippa did not smile.

"I'm here to tell you about your friend"

"And you have. Yes, i think its time for you to go now."

.He bowed his head gently. Philippa noticed his teacup was full again but didn't notice when he had filled it again.

"I will leave but i would like to know the timeline also. I'm afraid I have not been completely honest with you. You see, many people have tried to find you and tell you and none of them, including me initially, could even find you to let you know. If you have been here all along, I'm trying to understand how this could be." He certainly did work for a social service. The even tone in his voice, his patience. She understood how some of her patients felt during such a soft-tempered interrogation. She wanted to roll her eyes.

Philippa considered all of the people trying to find her and couldn't because of some reason or another. All of the potential reasons she could imagine, she wanted their source to go away, to vanish as if by. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time because of the thought.

She took a steady deep inhalation and answered, "I went to Ireland via portkey. I moved around and I came back into the country using the same portkey and moved and moved and moved and lived with someone shortly and that person helped me find a flat, this one where I have been almost two months. There it is." She unloaded this information on the same exhalation out and she felt lighter.

Had she said portkey? How? He would investigate later. He could tell she was getting tired. News moved very quickly during a war not all of it was accurate but the fact that Dorcas had been killed was accurate. It was known that Lord Voldemort was looking for Dorcas and had killed her. That was also accurate. Once the news had been discovered, confirmed the Order of the Phoenix was informed, what was left of it, and that news spread through the allied channels and in days maybe a week at the most, someone was looking for Philippa and no one had stopped. There might be someone looking for her right now and she had been in England for months and this flat for weeks at least.

"Thank you, Ms. Groves." The man said instead.

Then she felt it. It felt like a small knock on the door of her mind. She was suddenly in a smaller house on the inside side of the door and she knew the man was standing on the other side and that she could open the door or not. She did not. It was better than last time. At least he knocked, she thought.

He had never encountered anything like this. He didn't know muggles could do this at all. He only tried to make his job faster but instead of wandering around in her mind he had encountered a door made out of lead. He had to knock and from his side he saw a little sliding gate with her eyes peering through and she scrutinized him looking him up and down and her eyes registered a type of displeasure or disgust. When the little door was slid shut he found himself back in the kitchen again. Again, he thought, she is not a confirmed muggle. And yet could a muggle also be an occlumens? This was occlumency (wasn't it?) but he had never experienced it this way. And again, he didn't think it on the top layer of his mind but deep down in the wells of knowing himself a little jet that moved the currents of who he was. You can't even tell if she's a witch or a muggle. You recognize a part and not the whole. You need more information. Said differently, he appreciated that this would not be easy. Reading her thoughts would have been easy. He understood something else that day about people and, though small, he would add it to the small ball of hate he nurtured for himself that he watered occasionally in the hopes of growing a garden of sorts. Instead, and someday soon he knew, it would melt into sludge that would coat every corner of his life until he couldn't live with himself or the war ate them all whole. Sludgey corners and all.

"It's time for you to go now."

Did she understand what had happened, he wondered?

"Good day Mr.-" she said as she got up from the table. She did not know his name. He had in fact told her while she was walking in but she did not remember it nervous yet reassured as she was.

"Albus. Dumbledore." The man said getting up from the table. Outstretching a hand that she did not take.

Not these ridiculous names again, thought Philippa. She wouldn't let herself be bothered by what had just not happened. She needed to get him out of the house and he knew that. He dropped his hand and took no offense to this knowing what he had tried and failed to do and also feeling no shame in having tried.

"Ms. Meadowes, she was very talented. A very good witch. Dorcas was an excellent witch."

They were at the door now. Philippa had not been prepared to hear Dorcas' name in past tense. That is what hit her. That's what drew the tears to her eyes and set them sparkling in her face. And the witch part, she did not care one way or another.

"She, she valued friendship and goodness. She. Thank you." Philippa opened the door.

"Thank you for everything you've told me today, Ms. Groves. Would you like me to visit again?"

"That won't be necessary Mr.- Sorry, what was it?"

"No need to apologize. Albus." He said as he surveyed the door frame slightly distracted. He turned on the other side and smiled a thinned, wan smile. He tipped a hat on his head that Philippa hadn't notced him carrying. He lighted down the steps looking both ways as he crossed the street with his long legs, like a determined spider. He did look back over his shoulder a glance at the building and not at her, the smile was gone replaced by the look of concern and intensity he had while studying the door. She watched him walk in the direction of the hospital until he was part of the crowd and she stood there closing the door gently behind her.

"No one could find you." She had been protected all along and felt some frustration which would come later in feeling that she had wasted all that time afraid for nothing.

It seemed unfair that someone could bring that much sadness into a room, into a house and then leave without looking over their shoulder at her. She understood she told him not to come back but he could have asked, en route, out of the door, "are you okay with all of that?" Even if he hadn't waited for the answer. Maybe he wasn't a social worker after all.

Philippa opened a small door in the kitchen and shut the door behind her she pushed on a wall and it opened up silent to another small hall which she crawled into. She went down this hall and opened up to the space between the flats. This space had originally been used as a space to get to the outside windows easier for cleaning. It had been repurposed during a war to keep the neighbors of the flat in communication and access to each others homes to hide in if there were raids. The landlady, Robin would have told her this if Philippa had asked. Philippa went up a steep flight of steps and knocked on a door even smaller than the one she'd gone through. She opened the door to a furnished space. She went through the flat and down a flight of carpeted steps where she ran into her landlady, the person she wanted to speak with. This was not an emergency but she really needed someone to talk to.


	9. Chapter 8

"A man visited me today." The old woman's body froze.

"No, I'm fine. I mean. He came to tell me that my friend. My friend has died." The woman relaxed and also saddened reached over to hold the younger woman's hands in her own.

"I'm so sorry."

"I knew but someone just came with the news. This was the emergency."

"How?"

The old woman's face betrayed the question and so reflexive is this question that Philippa heard it though the woman did not speak the words. It's so strange that people ask this and yet she wanted to know. We all always want to know.

Philippa doubled over. "Peacefully. Quietly." She chanted to herself. Maybe there was magic there, too. Maybe by saying it enough times, it would be true. Philippa hoped it was. She wanted to say Dorcas died in her sleep. She died an even older woman than you but really she knew. If Dorcas lived as an auror, as a member of the Order maybe it wasn't peaceful but, it was good enough to think it had been. That's not what the old woman had meant. That's not the "how" the old woman was asking. Robin meant how did Philippa know her friend was gone. But not only did she not press the matter further, Robin let the young woman cry silently.

Philippa felt something had lifted but, for all the feeling of lightness and sadness and resignation, her feet carried her past her flat and as far away in the opposite direction that the man had gone. She would not and did not think about Dorcas or the man or the news he brought or anything else. When she was ready and after her walk, she would return home as she had.

Philippa would never say in her head what Dorcas was which became easier and easier as the old, sad parts began to break up and evaporate and leave mostly only the good parts. Philippa lived to be an old woman, past the age of her very old landlady who lived stunningly long for no other reason that she still wanted to be there in case Philippa ever did come back. Philippa would die warm in the comfort of her bed falling into a gentle, deep, dreamless sleep and then falling further into the greatest stillness, her family asleep in the other rooms (and what a full and happy, beautiful family it was). Up to that very moment from the day that she met the man and all through the next war, which she knew involved wizards and magic, aurors, dragons, witches, potions, spells all kept hidden behind the thin veil of what she knew was called the Statute of Secrecy, Philippa would never mention her friend or say Dorcas' name out loud again for the rest of her life.


	10. Chapter 9

Phillipa was gone now. Dorcas felt very much alone and had not anticipated how sick she would feel. She had watched a lot of people die in her time. A lot some the direct cause of… that did not matter. Phillipa had been sent away and now, all of it, everything, she felt at once. Dorcas had the strange sensation that she had turned around and someone had thrown the entire weight of the war at her and her reflexive action was to hold her arms out even as she knew it would snap her in half, would kill her. All those people- She understood how serious it was but she hadn't felt it. She had had someone to normalize and even everything out, she couldn't talk about the details but there was her old self, her old life, a tether to who she had been and therefore was and now she knew she was in for it. All of that gone with the whooshing sound followed by the pop of someone traveling by portkey. Now she could feel what it was doing to everyone around her even as she stumbled down the street which was quiet thankfully, mercifully. With every step she could feel the weight of everything get heavier even as the load remained the same. The energy required to move it all, to keep them all safe, all the time as best as she personally could. She had the strange sensation too that she could hear everyone in their home breathing. That as she passed a house she could hear everyone's individual breath and that winded her, from the outside looking at her she appeared as she did a woman going somewhere. She remained as composed as ever but even she walked faster than usual, she had no where to go.

She accelerated her pace until she nearly skipped and then you would have seen that this woman needed to get where she was going or she was going to die right there mid-prance. If you were close enough, you would have seen her sweat and what exactly was she looking for? Was she being chased, who was chasing her? And oh, God. What's wrong with her? She wasn't crying in the familiar sense of the word, her eyes were full of tears, her face was covered in tears, and her hand over her heart. She was going to die. Dorcas could hear the breathing in the houses and her own breath and felt like she sat in the mouth of an enormous city-sized animal, warm and damp and alive. All of that training, all of those fights and the many more she had assumed would come would be for nothing. The thing that killed her would be saying goodbye to Phillipa. Fitting, she found it. There was a space between two homes where this neighborhood used to have gardens, before they started fitting houses in between the spaces of other houses. It was insignificant but so were the insides of the new constructions. Compared to the houses it sat next to it looked like it had been made a clearing instead of the clearing it naturally was and so small scraps found its way into this space. She exchanged one hand for the one over her heart trying to keep whatever was falling out of her soul in. She steadied herself against the bricking that separated the space before taking out her wand and tapping it against the wall and throwing a spell above her head moving her arm in one fluid motion above her. The air rippled and a small, gentle wave of air flowed above her head. The natural conclusion of that gesture ended with her letting go of her wand and it landing a short distance in front of her hand and her body falling, collapsing a little bit behind it.

Dorca woke up what felt like days later which had in fact only been a few short hours, if that. Panicking she found herself reach for her pockets. There it was on the ground where it had remained, she reached for her wand remembering how and why she was there. She rolled over enough to tuck it back into her jacket without bothering to check the defenses she had set up or establish new ones. The weight now sat on her back and she found it difficult and pointless to move. What did it matter now? When had it ever mattered? She had failed in stopping everything up to this point and most likely would continue to fail. She had not considered what it would mean for her to lose certain things and now they were lost anyway even if she had. She could not have fought harder, the Order could not have fought harder, Lord Voldemort could not have been less cruel, and if it had worked then it might be another her in a different time or place doing the same thing at that very moment. Defeated. But she did not consider any of this once she could feel her wand against her ribcage as uncomfortable as it was, and almost without changing her body position from how she laid when she collapsed, she moved her left arm slightly under her head to shield her face against the grass and weeds blinked at the wall in front of her ignoring the tears streaming down her face and, closing her eyes, she decided to die but, instead just fell back asleep.

***

In the house to the right of this little field lived a couple. One of that couple was out on business and that left the bed deliciously wide and cozy. They loved each other yet when he woke up to go to the bathroom, he recognized in a sleepy way, for all that love that people, including his wife, should have the good fortune of sleeping alone in a big bed knowing that someone somewhere still loves them. At the very moment hundreds of miles away, the woman this man married woke up instinctively realized he wasn't there to wake her up at this very time, stretched like a big cat and fell back to sleep smiling. The man in his half sleep went to the window drawn as he was like all life to the light and looked out onto what could have been a garden below and smarted. The small space, littered with scraps of paper and overgrown slightly with weeds and native soft grass was still dark. The day had not made it to the spot yet even as the sun was still sliding up higher into the sky. It was if the whole lot was still in darkness, still stuck in the night and, it too, was waking up. He did not communicate it to himself but he perceived a strange sensation that it was also underwater. That he was staring at the bottom of the dark lot submersed in an exceptionally clear pool of water. He went to the bathroom as if nothing odd had happened. "Still tired", he thought to himself as awake as he was. When he returned he went back to the window and looked at the lot again. He breathed a sigh of relief. This time the space appeared as it always had when he woke up, that he really must have slept so well that he had imagined it. A nervousness, a tenseness that he didn't realize was building up in his body evaporated with the sigh. The sun was even higher and the day about to start but he could manage an hour more of sleep. So odd how quickly the day started. How fast the sun could move so you barely noticed it rising or setting. He got back in bed. Chuckling to himself at how silly he was to have even imagined such a thing. He managed to get back to sleep and would be greeted by the movement of the neighborhood but found that the bed was suddenly too big for him to enjoy. He would not have noticed a well dressed woman with her hands shoved deep into her pockets making her way to no place in particular because the window did not face that direction. He would not have thought the two in any way related: the lot at night in the day and the woman. Why would they have been related at all? He had merely imagined the former after all.


	11. Chapter 10

Alastor had stopped crying years ago. Dorcas mentioned that they were just rumors. Just rumors of what Alastor and his class had done, she didn't give any details but she didn't have to. She knew. All the aurors knew. This was before it became a reputable profession. It was during the old wars. Alastor soaked in the tub and felt like he had the misfortune of being born during so many wars, always a war going on until he was old enough to fight in them himself. Dorcas didn't have to give any more details because even if she didn't know details she could sketch out in her mind what those rumors meant based on the horrors of her own auror training. They had done terrible, terrible truly awful things in his time. They had been taught a different style, a more forward way, a quicker way. A lot of people had to pay for that training including him. The good guys. He couldn't cry now. He dried out.

That's what they had called it once the nightmares started, once the old dogs started speaking and he found out that he wasn't the only one who woke up screaming or crying or back there where they didn't belong or with this person or in this coffin or. They had called it drying out when they started to lose sensation, a sense of feeling like what a normal person should feel like in certain situations. Joy at a child's birthday, fear for one's life looking down from a broom. Affection, tenderness, sadness, anger, all gone, just husk now. He thought that was funny and yet he still did feel and just couldn't or wouldn't cry. Remus had told him that he had buried the body. She was now safe and Alastor would stay grateful for Remus' kind gesture until he died. It would have been his undoing, believing, knowing that she was gone because of him. That's what Dorcas had said. She said she would never forgive Alastor. Never forgive him for saying the words, that combination of sounds that unlocked the one reason she would go into hiding in the first place. He had racked his mind over how to get her to safety. It crossed his mind to send a mark over her house but he hadn't had to and was also thankful that he hadn't told anyone about his plan though someone else had the idea.

Maybe he should have, if he had been the one to do it, she would have traveled to the other side of the world to get away from him. She would never speak to him but she would be alive and far away and safe. Now she was close and safe but not alive. Anyway. Anyway. Her home smelled clean and cold and he wasn't the romantic romantic, sentimental type which made him and her and all excellent aurors good at their job. He remembers that he sat on the edge of her bed and looked around and successfully blocked one of the last moments they had been together. Initially he told her "go for yourself" for your own safety." What a foolish choice of words and this he smiled at, she was too tired to find this funny at the time. The mark, her friend, the everything, she was just too tired. The mark is what really set her off though. There was so much miscommunication all the time. He marveled in every instance how quickly she had found out and the chaos that a misinterpretation could cause. Dorcas mind finally cracked under the weight. She was a real auror now. She would have been unstoppable if she hadn't been stopped. He could remember vaguely from training how to tell the last spells on a wand but had asked Lydia to find someone at the ministry to do it. He would send an owl to meet in a candy shop in Diagon Ally and this young man, this child, he thought, knew enough wandlore to assess in the broadest way what had happened.

There were deflections, protections and a rarely used and inconsistent deflection. Used once, followed by defenses and then nothing. Alastor had asked what the one meant. She had not attempted to kill him. You couldn't tell the speed in which the spells cast anyway but after the last deflection? Nothing. He brought back her wand and after learning what happened, after learning what really happened and leaning also that the wandlore was so difficult to interpret because it ultimately didn't matter. He had learned too late, as he was going to her that she was already going, going, going somewhere else where no magic could bring her back. He had kissed her once on the forehead and he wasn't sentimental. He blocked the idea of wrapping his arms around her of telling her how proud he was of her, of taking her face in his hands again and kissing her again. On the forehead. And hugging her again and telling her again that he was proud of her and looping on itself until he got old and died first as it should have been. Safety. What had he been thinking?

***

The words that sent her away were "do it for me". They brought tears to Dorcas' eyes. He had seen her angry and sad and scared that and this went beyond that because she folded inwards and he saw in her face many very heavy doors shut and lock after he said them. He should not have said those words and she said she would never forgive him for saying them. That's what she had said the last time they had spoken. That was the last thing she ever said to him. And he was ok with that but she was right. Surprise.

It was an old dramatic thing to do, burning someone else's wand, burning a colleague's wand. You would think with all that magic, with all the life tethered to it and all the memory it held that there would be a spark of color a sparkle, a shimmer, something to say: I acted as an extension of this person. He thought for a moment, he let himself believe that hers would turn into a bouquet of flowers like a muggle magic trick. HA. That burning it would swing a door open somewhere and she would walk in and let him kiss her and hold her and that together they would find the incantations, the ingredients to rewind everything so that when she was born she entered a world where there was no war, no job, no him. The wand was laid over kindling, some parchment, and under a log. He thought to do this in her own place but it wasn't after all, her place, not anymore. He did it at headquarters alone in the middle of the night when people were either on duty or awake pacing in their rooms or sleeping if they could anymore. He stopped himself from saying sorry in his mind. He touched the edge of his wand to the kindling and watched as the wand caught on fire and burned like everything else in the fireplace. It too, after all, was mostly wood.


	12. Chapter 11

The party went swimmingly. Several people showed up early to make preparations and, as should have been assumed, everyone fell as in love with Philippa as they already were with Dorcas. As they should have, as was the natural order. They were extensions of one another and what they admired in one was magnified in the other. When Philippa was cornered to discuss one topic they found that Dorcas could expand on it. When one could be found singing a song in one room, the other would catch the same song at a different point in another, completely separated from each other. That Dorcas had worried about Philippa not having her own friends there was of no importance to anyone including Philippa herself. It was she who had initiated their friendship so long ago noticing the relationship between their names and, with Dorcas' friends too, she made it so that everyone felt that they had been friends all along which they had been through this same person that she loved.

The walls were sound proofed unbeknownst to Dorcas at the time which she realized after stepping out to get some air and greet the next visitors. She walked through her own fire gate and didn't understand the implications of that but it did not affect anything she didn't think. With the door closed behind her the evening was as still as it was without a party of drunk wizard adults weren't hosting a birthday party during a war. When the door swung open again and sound flooded out and it seemed even louder than it was for the contrast. Trays of food floated throughout the house and there were several types of different lubricating beverages bobbing in the air being passed from one guest to the next. Someone burped out a small ball of fire, Philippa made a note to stay away from anything that wasn't water from the tap unsure if she witnessed what happened accurately or was starting to hallucinate because of whatever she herself had drank earlier.

Dorcas was now on the couch covered in a blanket with Philippa at the other end, their legs tangled together keeping each other warm. The Pruitts were sitting on the floor playing cards with Basil. In the corner, Remus danced with a bottle of something clutched in one hand to his chest, singing. The festivities were winding down, people discussed at the kitchen table. One or several or more people passed out in grandpa's old room, several more walking downstairs to say good evening. Remus looked like he would start crying as he sang louder and louder, singing now almost to howling. Philippa heard a chair in the kitchen scrape the floor and watched as Sirius bound into the room.

"Steady old boy" she thought he said to Remus. Sirius pat his friend on the shoulder and pulled Remus in until it looked like they were slow-dancing. Remus head tucked into Sirius neck. Sirius right hand on the back of Remus' neck. Philippa watched silently as the party swirled quietly around them all. No one having noticed anything. It looked like Sirius was whispering something in Remus' ear. Remus shook his head and, as close as they still were, they looked at each other Sirius still speaking him his hand still warming the back of Remus neck, he shook his head again and handed Sirius the bottle and sat on the single, well-worn seat sinking. His hand covering part of his face. Sirius had gone back into the kitchen and came back with a glass of water after reaching out. Remus took the glass and drank, set it on the small table next to the seat and Sirius made himself comfortable sitting on the floor which would have made Emmeline laugh out loud. As posh as he was? Sitting on the floor?! But she had left in a flurry much earlier and Remus, who was leaned back with his eyes closed would just have to explain later as he said he would. In the meantime, Dorcas would know, surely. A peel of laughter errupted from the kitchen and Sirius looked up smiling in their direction but stayed where he was. He leaned against the seat where Remus was now sleeping and surveyed the party, lost in his own thought.

"Dodie", Philippa whispered louder than she thought since she was still tipsy. She motioned from the couch towards Sirius. Dorcas turned to look at a scene that was so plain, so benign that she wasn't sure she was even looking at the right place.

"Is that because he's a-", Dorcas eyes widened and her hands flew to her face in a gesture that was supposed to mean "shh" but came out as a flailing because Dorcas was also tipsy.

Fabian, looked up from his card game and glanced in the direction of Sirius and Remus having only caught a glimpse of whatever it was that was going on in the corner in the room, far more invested in the card game before him.

"Homosexual?" he answered. He went back to his card game. "Likely, I think."

Dorcas shoulders dropped in relief. No one else looked up from the card game and Philippa who thought she was being very quiet before and wasn't thought she was being very loud now laughing behind her hands and making no sound at all watching the range of emotion play out on Dorcas' face.

It hadn't crossed her mind. She turned to Dorcas and she mouthed.

"I thought you said he might…"

Dorcas shook her head wide-eyed again but smiling. Philippa shrugged still smiling. He was really close to Sirius' neck. It seemed dangerous especially if no one else knew which apparently they didn't. She should probably tell someone who cared, the man with the speech. What was his name again? He'd brought a gift! How thoughtful! She would tell him when he came back. Your neck, be careful! Her thoughts crashed over each other funny and serious at the same time. Mostly funny. She thought about all of this moving Dorcas legs' out of the way to snuggle under the blanket more. She's being dramatic, she could have moved her legs over. Dorcas was smiling, being a troublemaker. She had always said Philippa was a finicky sleeper and blanket thief. Philippa shook her head and pulled the blanket up by her own neck leaning into the cushion behind her. I will tell him when he gets back I don't care what she says. Both of them smiling at each other and trying not to burst into fits of laughter.

"Happy birthday, Petal." Dorcas mouthed.

Philippa shook her head she would tell him alright. She snuggled into the couch forgetting about the gift first, then the what it was she should be telling anyone and then who she should be telling it to.

"Happy birthday, Tulip."

The last thing she could think about was the weight and warmth of her friends legs over hers and that this had been a wonderful birthday, probably the best one yet and she closed her eyes thinking that it would be awful to clean it up in the morning and that she would ask Dorcas to use magic to do it. That would be her birthday gift to her but what would she give her? M watched her friend nod off lifting her head at irregular intervals when she thought of something else. She had always been like this, she fought sleep so hard. Even as she was the better sleeper. Philippa yawned watching the men play at the table and looked over in time to catch Remus and Sirius talking to one another Remus eyes still closed but making Sirius laugh all the same. Another burst of laughter broke from the kitchen and they all turned instinctively. A glass of something spilled and no one seemed to notice except Philippa who yawned again and told herself she would clean it up in the morning. She watched the drip, drip of the wine off the corner of the table until she fell asleep.

Dorcas thought that, yes, this one. This one was our best birthday yet. What was I even worried about? And she too was lulled to sleep by the sound of ambient joy surrounding her and because of how they were sleeping on the couch, she did not notice the spill at all otherwise she would have been kept awake wondering if she should wake her friend to clean up the mess.


	13. Chapter 12

All day she felt a pressure in her abdomen as she dug around in the garden and painted the sides of the cottage a cheery, pastel yellow. When she finally went to lay down in bed, she felt that the feeling had grown slightly more pronounced and as she drift off to sleep she mindlessly felt around her belly button and felt a little nub. This did not startle her. She mindlessly thumbed at the growth until it was no longer a nub at all but that it had grown to a thin spiked tip that had grown out and onto the flat of her stomach. Through all of this she remained unfrightened and over the course of several days Dorcas lay in bed with her shirt slightly lifted as she watched whatever it was burning an amber glow, crawl against her stomach until it grew tall enough to lift its open end up as if it had asked a question and received a difficult answer. It grew taller and taller, winding its way in the air until it reached the window sill directly above her bed. It curlicued gracefully up, made itself into something like a fist and knocked gently at the window uncurled itself and as if it had a small face turned to her again and thought it didn't have a face, Dorcas could sense that it smiled.

When Dorcas woke up she found herself lying on her back. She reached for the vine made of light that had started in her stomach and, of course, found nothing. She sat very still, got her wand and with her back against the wall she moved the drapes covering the window. She inched closer to look out, wand at the ready to find that it was raining outside. The world in a late midday, she could barely make out the forms outside of the window but the light streaming through cast a honeyed, green tinge through the gloom as if the trees were breathing all of their color out.

She realized then that she had been in the house for weeks at least and that she had not remembered the last time the windows were opened or what the ground looked like when she arrived or even what time of year it could be with all this rain. The clean air rushed in as she opened the window and she felt renewed and saddened. She would die here. She decided to leave the cottage for the first time since her arrival. The door swung inward and left a small puddle from the door on the floor. She left the door open, the rain making its way in as she put on a jumper and wrapped a blanket around her neck as a scarf even if it she wasn't that cold, it smelled like home.

The door shut behind her and after casting a spell to keep the rain off for the most part she held her wand in her crossed arms slightly under the makeshift scarf. She stepped gingerly down the steps and onto the slick pavers. Her shoes would be covered in mud and her feet wet once she stepped off of this path and into the forest but once she recognized the likelihood of that, some part of her knew she wouldn't even notice when it happened. Without uncrossing her arms, she cast her patronus under her breath. She perceived a flash of small, white light somewhere but did not check to make sure her patronus was there very high above and behind her. It always was when it was called and this time was no different.

She started walking away from the cabin which was still the dark greyish navy of her real awake life and set off to the left. She could go across the entire earth and then step off into the stars to somewhere else and never have to think about anyone she'd ever known or anything she'd ever been or anything forever. As her earlier self knew, she did not notice her shoes get covered in mud. She did not care that her feet were wet. She maneuvered slowly but deliberately through the knot of trees and didn't notice the ground under her change lost as she was in the idea of being nowhere and everywhere at once and if there was a spell for that. She smiled at the thought and walked but stopped when the trees opened up and she reached the edge of the tree line where it opened up to a different earth and she squinted out into the rain at a dark expanse of ocean or a lake or sea, she couldn't tell with all the rain, that she had not known was there all along.


	14. Chapter 13

Remus' nose was bleeding. His shirt blood splattered. His ribs were sore after being punched repeatedly and thrown on the ground. Sirius got lucky today. They were sitting on the same log and Remus' face was in Sirius' hand trying not to laugh. Sirius pointed his wand at his friend's face. A cracking sound sounded in the air as Remus flinched away to hold his face trying not to smile as sore as his face was.

"If you think you feel bad, you should see the other guy." Sirius said. Remus clutched his side stabilizing himself with the hand that he'd just used to hold his nose.

"I can get you shirt, too." Sirius motioned toward Remus and was brushed away both of them beaten up. Sirius got up from log gingerly. Remus watched him steady himself, ah-ha!

"How's your leg?", Remus asked.

Sirius looked over his shoulder and affected sternness. He limped away.

"I just need to stretch it out.", Sirius replied raising his voice even though the stillness of the wood made his voice carry to Lupin.

Both of them dissolved into a coughing fit in the cold. Remus got up and found himself steady and stable. He knew Sirius knew himself well enough to know if he needed to magic his wounds away and that the coldness might effect that but he said he was fine.

They padded away in the snow in silence away from a small clearing ringed with trees. Not the Whomping Willow but they did their job. Initially, they broke into splinters, one setting off the other but after they tested the barrier throwing a rock, both of them decided against it. Maybe they could just fall to create a boundary? It had been unnecessary. Lupin thought his arrangements with Sirius would end, especially since Sirius spent so much time with the Potters now in anticipation of the baby's arrival. But he kept his promise. Peter had offered but not only would it not be the same, Peter would not be able to stop him if there was a problem. Peter had shown up at first but Lupin and Sirius and Peter all knew and understood the arrangement wouldn't work. It just wouldn't. They had not had to disinvite Peter and Peter hadn't felt the need to explain his no longer being there. This was a long time ago before they found the clearing, before they planted the seeds for these trees and Dorcas taught Lupin how to force a thing to grow. Lupin hadn't explained everything but Dorcas felt inclined to mention that something, even a plant forced to grow before its time would be weaker for it. Lupin had nodded and they sat in silence since Lupin knew that he needed something. There was nothing else he could do for the moment. During the right time, or the wrong time, he could rip through an actual cage so a weakened ring of trees would have to do in the meantime.

Lupin felt bad at first. Here Sirius was babysitting, still. Even after school. It had been different then but even now? But it was Sirius who proposed one day that they "meet me at the trees". Lupin knew what that meant though he was confused. There was still a week or so left until the next cycle started, until the tide line would change but he met Sirius in the evening and found a campfire on the edge of the circle. Sirius warmed himself. There was no explanation. He handed Lupin food and they slept under the stars. When they woke up, Sirius pulled his shirt off and Lupin did the same and they were in the middle of the circle as they had before and also not and they wrestled and they boxed and they threw each other on the ground and punched at each other's sides and they had understood when the other was tired. Lupin on one knee panting. Sirius both hands resting on his thighs, staring at each other exhausted. Just too tired to talk as always.

Lupin did not want to think about it too deeply but, when he went on long walks, he couldn't help thinking. It felt better to move his body than to sit and think and brood. He thought Sirius, as a man, needed to punch Lupin, as a man, for all that he'd done for him. For all the growling they'd done at each other. For all the times Lupin lifted Sirius bodily over his extended frame and thrown Sirius, howling, across a room, across a forest clearing. Of all the times Sirius had to risk his life to keep Lupin's rages contained. For keeping the world safe from the nights of Lupin cracking his neck and sometimes keeling over and retching or vomiting outright. Of shaking and paling. When Lupin got out of school, that's when he read deeply about his condition. He had never thought to think about what he looked like when he changed but, when he read it finally, for that too. Having to watch the hair on his arms stand up completely straight, to watch his hair get grey… greyer. To watch his eyes turn yellow. But Sirius stayed and they met at the same place or a different place. Lupin tried to talk to him again. Lupin could find another way.

"Why when this way works?", Sirius replied.

Lupin had tried to get indignant and act offended. Sirius was implying that he wasn't smart enough to take care of himself. Sirius eyebrows arched in genuine surprise and then his face resolved. He smirked. That look. Nice try.

Lupin didn't think that what Sirius hated was the aftermath of the transformation. When Lupin woke up in a daze and that he looked around even if briefly that he wasn't sure where he was. That he sometimes woke up with tears in his eyes, that the Sirius hated that sunlight and the dawn because it illuminated his friend's expression. Because that is what he hated. He stayed on the edge of the trees. He usually didn't even look, it hurt him to look. It had always hurt him to watch. When he was sure that he was changing back into himself, coming down, he would just turn away most of the time. He tossed Lupin his clothes when he was reasonably sure that he was done, that he was himself. Or rather his other self. Lupin made a distinction and Sirius didn't. It wasn't necessary. Sirius knew both of him and loved him and that's why he was there. If Lupin had said James or Peter needed to be there, had wanted them there, they would have all been there, even James. But Lupin would never. So proud, so melancholy. Anyway, James was busy and Peter couldn't help not in the way that Sirius could. James had tried to breach the subject when Sirius visited. This, too, felt like a long time ago but really wasn't. Sirius ended the conversation. He would go. He would go every time and had.

Sirius watched Lupin stretch. Sirius had the same sensation but imagined it was worse for Lupin, like your skin was too tight. That you were more fragile as a man. Lupin put on a long sleeve shirt. He walked like nothing happened though slower or like his trousers were a little too small even as they were kept up with a belt or magic. Once, after Lupin had dressed, he sat back on the ground and cried, his head hung low and shaking back and forth as if someone had asked a question he didn't want to answer. He had pushed Sirius away for the attempt to place his hand on Lupin's shoulder. It was then maybe that Sirius got the idea. They did not fight with each other. He could argue with both James and Peter. Lupin, no. Funny, then, that Lupin felt the same way about Sirius. If Lupin hit him, maybe he would be able to relieve some of the resentment of all of their insistence to make sure he was safe, to make sure he had someone with him, so that he would not always be alone. He was always alone. He would go on long walks. He visited the Potters sure but not the way he did. Not the way Peter did. He didn't live or sleep at headquarters like everyone else. No one knew where he slept. Sirius wondered for so long that it brought him all the way out into the woods and did not find Lupin so went back. He didn't know what else to do or say or think so he told Lupin one day to meet him at the trees. And Lupin did. And Sirius imagined what? Has he thought it through, really? What would he be doing when Lupin punched him or threw him on the ground? Of course he had fought back! What else should he have done? Lupin would have stopped hitting Sirius if Sirius had stopped hitting him. He would not have wrestled him to the ground if Sirius hadn't lunged first. So?

And this was the arrangement. It paralleled the other arrangement. Sirius slowed down to let Lupin catch up to him and they walked together. Sirius threw his arm over Lupin's shoulder thumping Lupin on the chest with his open hand, smiling. He knew Lupin felt better. Sirius felt better like he had taken a sip of water to remove a bolus in his throat. He could breath again. Lupin shoved his hands in his pockets and alternated looking directly in front of him or at the ground but knew he could sense Sirius smiling next to him. Lupin looked the opposite direction trying to conceal his own smile, Sirius tripped a little, he was staring at Lupin, his arm still on his shoulder. Lupin didn't budge even as he smiled. He stared straight ahead of him. Sirius looked ahead pleased with himself, pleased with Lupin, pleased with the cleanness of the air. Lupin made no show to shrug him away but his shoulders weren't up to his ears. They walked like that until just before the gesture became ridiculous and excessive.

Sirius was still smiling at himself, his cleverness. This was good for both of us he thought. He was paying attention to where he walked now. They could magic themselves out faster but the day was still young. They had nowhere else to be. It was then that Lupin could look over without being noticed. Sirius bit his lip and turned to look at Lupin who was no longer smiling. Lupin looked ahead again and exhaled. Sirius thought this was funny but said nothing.


	15. Chapter 14

A word on paranoia: everything becomes related. A straight line can be drawn from this thing that happened that many days ago, to this thing now. Everything takes on the same form, the same weight of other, unrelated events until the mind cracks and is paved over with this residue. Someone knows. Someone is pulling the strings. Someone is making a fool of you, watching and laughing and waiting.

The training for this had been the most difficult of anything the aurors learned or practiced and found that that it was difficult for several reasons. People left crying or teary eyed. There were days where a session would leave someone gasping for air. Dorcas was in the first group, the first where their minds were being opened up like a small shell with a big knife, she tried to be mindful when she was in the second group to not make a mess of it herself. But that's not how that works, one can be a mindful but unkind legilimens. One cannot be mindful and use the imperius curse. Especially not the latter because it is an imprinting of one's will on the other. It's not a suggestion; it's an insistence. So outside of training, she had not known that she was unprepared because everyone was so bad at it. They weren't a weak class per se but they were different. That lessons had been odd. It was coincidence that this lesson was moved or had to be changes the expert in this thing called out sick and then there were reschedules… No one had been adequately trained (not like there was adequate training for it) and anyway it was so rare. Most aurors, let alone non-aurors of wizarding England, back then had not even heard of legilemency until they were in training. And one so closely related to a curse? All the unforgivable curses, to do them were so difficult. Even more difficult was to do one quickly. You had to call on all of the foulest parts of yourself and who in all of England could really use the imperius curse elegantly enough to not make it appear as if they weren't using it?

They had left training lying to themselves and knowing they were lying to themselves because when it was used on her, when it happened, she had hardly even realized it was happening at all. In fact, with someone who knew what they were doing, it could be quite pleasant. She felt like someone was pouring a warm bucket of water over her head and had a faint, very far away thought that she might have gone to the bathroom on herself. She hadn't, but she wouldn't have known to look down at herself because the thought was already gone. She started to walk and thought how strange it was until she realized she hadn't told herself to walk. When she told herself to stop, she kept walking. It was a very strange sensation, indeed. Some part of her recognized she was and wasn't thinking simultaneously and these thoughts were happening in mere fractions of a second from one another. And where was the panic that she and so many other people had felt in training? Where was the feeling that aided in shaking the other person out of their mind? Where was the feeling? If she could feel it, she could push whoever it was out of her existence. But she wasn't even thinking that, not really, because another dangerous idea started to form, to cement itself. It was easier to let someone think for her. But this was far away still. She felt herself smiling vaguely, dumbly. She kept walking and walking until she was brought face to face with a smiling man with a grey bowler wearing a blueish grey suit, a woman in a smart navy skirt suit at his arm. Dorcas shook his hand and now she could feel the panic. It was the woman in the suit or or the man or both of them or neither of them or. He dropped his voice as they were on a busy street, he gave her information she needed, information she would have willingly gone to collect of her own free will and then information she would not have.

"Ah, that's why," she said, still smiling.

"I hope you understand. It was faster this way.", the man said out loud or in her head.

The woman stood there looking at and past Dorcas at the same time. Dorcas shook her head as a gesture she would have done naturally anyway. He tipped his hat and they walked off. When her mind was free, the temperature dropped and the wind picked up where it left off, where it had always been though it seemed sudden. Dorcas stood still until it did not make sense to stand there anymore, until it would have been suspicious to stand there any longer. She stood so longer that it would be pointless to feign having dropped something or that she might have missed the bus, she started to walk of her own volition.

She hadn't had to think of her training in a long time. What it had taught her and what it obviously hadn't. Until now she had believed to be proficient at occlumency. As the first group gained composure, they were asked to switch. She would be in group B now. She had had to wander around someone else's mind and the familiar roadmap she had built for herself over time was unusable with someone else. These training sessions were familiar and legendary in the worst way. Some people, known legilimens were only allowed ever to work with highly, highly gifted occlumens. But like many gifted people in a new setting, some people learned they too were gifted when given the chance. How many time had the tape deck of other people's minds unspooled in these very same sessions was anyone's incorrect guess. The highest estimation could still have been doubled. All sort of disgusting, horrible things unwound during those sessions with the unspoken rule to never speak of them to anyone else, which made it worse. They were brothers and sisters in training and in the field. They were to defend one another before anyone else, before themselves. If one of them went down, that represented a measurable net decrease in the safety of the wizarding population at any moment and all of humanity in the long run. Whatever you saw in someone else's mind, you did not, even as it became part of your own mind. It was for everyone's own good.


	16. Chapter 15

Several classes ahead of Dorcas', one auror stopped speaking to another. They never spoke again because of something that no one else could know about because neither of them would or could speak about it. Unspeakable. Every year someone would get sick all over the floor right there. This had happened every single year and that was hardly the worst thing that happened. What of the aurors who never made it to the field? What of the ones that did not treat other aurors as family? The Ministry believed then as now that this was a risk worth taking. Dorcas felt sick like the dark spaces between the atoms were prodded at with light. It was unnatural for her. She, like many others, quietly put more energy in blocking the spell, developing the counter measure than developing the skill to do legilimency on other people. As a result, in her class, there were very few good enough for them to ever be exceptional at occlumency.

After the tutorial and presentation, on their first day on practicals, she thought that being in group B would be easier. It was worse. It made her sick and threw her into a shaking fit and a rash spread under her shirt on her right side on her ribcage. She was rooting in someone else's things like a pig, sniffling and getting herself dirty. They had analogies and other more colorful sayings to illustrate the idea but for the purposes outlined here, it was like having just taken a shower and being asked to put on someone's stinking, dirty, sweaty clothes. Just foul. Just so foul. Even the thought of figuratively having to pull on anyone's sopping wet anything. Every month, at least once a month, they did this and it didn't get easier, though they got better at it. Some better than others. Some learning faster out of necessity or skill. She built other skills around this one knowing this was a weakness, but figured the likelihood of meeting someone like this in battle would take a talent not worth training for anyway. And others too voiced their indignation: If someone could do this, they were most likely a goner. This training was a technicality to be sure. They didn't sign up for this. Who has time to stand staring someone in the face in the field to read the others mind? etc And still every month without warning. Group A: name, name, name and so on. Group B and they knew they would have to do it all again sometimes for days. Until Group A and B assignments, they had to train for field assignments. They studied like never before. They were sent to St. Mungo's. They became used to the idea they might die young. But no one could really communicate the idea that one could stoop so low, not really. The group sessions were just the beginning. To be a powerful occlumens meant to be less vulnerable to the imperius curse. To be less vulnerable meant that you could not be turned into a weapon that used all of the skills of the wizard doing the cursing and the skills of the one being cursed. That an auror's mind was to be protected over the body and they had the death-rate to prove it and as much was said out-loud to no one's surprise.

Dorcas would experience the unforgivable curses with the exception of the one obviously but- Again, it hadn't felt so smooth in school when someone told her what to do. There was always an apprehension or a gracelessness and the ability to shake the curse off, so to speak, made too many of them overly confident. Being under the imperius curse wasn't so bad at all! The training department as eager as they were to prioritize one curse, could not bring themselves to adequately teach the other, so people who should have been more afraid when they were sent to apprenticeship weren't. The war was still going on. Aurors and curse breakers were needed to fight and not teach. So as dedicated as everyone was it was all they could do to spare these gifted aurors to lecture first and then host a tutorial and then monitor and correct and coach during a practical and then send these same people off to the field for apprenticeship and then and then and then. Some of the training wasn't as thorough. Some of the checks couldn't be checked again. Everyone's life depended on it but there just wasn't enough time or enough lives.

An auror would encounter the curse in the field would recognize, some of them too late, what was happening. One of them, in the class years behind Dorcas, walked clean over a cliff and didn't start screaming until mere seconds before he hit the gr-. Just foul. So foul.

She shook again and was back in the room. She turned and saw that one of her colleagues was on the ground face up, slowly blinking away tears. Another was on all fours laughing as if this was the single funniest thing that anyone could ever do. She said that's what helped her break it. This auror felt something warmer, something stronger than she was and she and her brother had this inside joke and she explained it in a convoluted way and she started laughing again to herself, less enthusiastically, but after they had heard it before they couldn't stand to hear her laugh ever again.

But whatever she had done, worked. Dorcas went to her after the practical. Teach me to do what you did, she implored. Tell me the story, tell me the joke you and your brother had. But the other auror couldn't conjure up the energy to even cast the spell. The next practical, by the luck of the draw, Dorcas was in the group to cast the curse. She felt her arm glow warm from inside and she felt almost happy and so close to this same auror she had spoken to the day before. Dorcas led her around in straight lines and found how difficult it was to get her to approximate natural movement. Dorcas wondered how people were able to get someone on the floor, to get them to jump. Her arm felt warm still but it became steadily heavier like she was holding up an anvil and not her wand. She no longer felt as happy, in fact when did she become so tired. She just couldn't hold her arm up any longer but she had driven her colleague straight into a wall and she was walking still. Dorcas arm burned now and she felt like she might collapse and so she released the spell letting her arm drop to her side barely keeping her wand pinched between her fingers. And she felt so much better. Dorcas didn't register and might not have even cared that for all of the awkwardness of the other auror's walking, this same person who could untangle herself from the imperius curse less than a day ago, had not been able to do so today. There was no laughter. Her colleague after a startled awakening backed away from the wall and, after a strange but brief delay, reached for her bleeding nose, cursing.

Dorcas walked the rest of the way home, she had things to do, could have found things to do and instead of getting on the bus or anywhere she relished walking and stopping and starting again on her own volition. Somewhere she believed she wasn't quite herself and yet there she was. She felt the same smile she had on earlier and didn't change it out of tiredness or out of superstition. In truth, she always had a slight smile on her face. Where Philippa beamed, Dorcas' face said 'hmm, this is nice'. She had just not noticed until, well. There was nothing in her training to help her with this so she walked and walked and built the old walls in her head. She knew it was unlikely to work against the man in the bowler and the woman but Dorcas tried anyway. She started with a brick in a corner and paved it over with mortar. She set another next to it and stacked another brick on top of those layering the joining compound between each. She did not consider this magic even though, in the mind of a witch, it very much was.


	17. Chapter 16

Whatever they thought of their sister, their niece really was a sweet and beautiful child what Bellatrix did see and know of her. It was even more unfortunate, Bellatrix thought, that youngest her sister made this old-man, weasel-looking child that she doted on and cooed over. Even more bewildering was that her beautiful baby sister had married so far down. They all had, there was nowhere else to go but down from their last name. At least she married higher up in another country, in someone else's culture. But Narcissa, poor, sweet, and obviously lovedrunk Narcissa married this vain, useless, clueless dolt. The lies she must have told herself to be here, to get to a place where she could sit and really be fascinated by her ugly baby. The lies she must tell herself still. Bellatrix glanced side long at her sister filled with genuine confusion.

She had felt nothing on finding out she would be an aunt again and felt only revulsion now. What a short tumble to the relative middle; both of her younger sisters shamed the family name. This child would grow up and look like his rat-faced father. Just a pinched look and countenance, too much slenderness in the proportions. There would be no confusion that he was a Malfoy. What a waste. And yet, in this child's way, he was already doing his mother's side of the family favors.

Lord Voldemort seemed, if not cheerier, less volatile. Maybe that wasn't true. He loved Narcissa in his way, even then. He walked in the garden with her, spoke differently to her and Narcissa, for her part engaged and enjoyed, in _her_ own way, their discussions but, they learned this behavior at the feet of their own mother and father. She thought all of them had learned to shield something and store it away and reveal only a silvery civility. Andromeda just turned her coolness towards her own family but the snootiness remained, the poshness remained, the blackness, as ever, remained. She didn't agree with it but she understood it. She didn't like it but could bear it. It was Bellatrix who acted outside of their upbringing.

Narcissa rocked Draco back and forth in her arms. She could sense Bellatrix' boredom. She did not get it and did not want to and Narcissa didn't care. If Andromeda had been there, she would have understood. She was a great mother, Narcissa just knew. She missed her sometimes in a way that she knew she was not missed. She knew somewhere that when she married the muggle that what Andromeda meant was that all of their family, including her sisters, meant nothing. This stranger meant more than they did. It did not matter that Andromeda was the one who taught Narcissa magic when she came home from school for the holidays. It did not matter that when Narcissa finally got to school that her sisters, both of them, ensured Narcissa was given preferential treatment because one was so feared and the other so dearly loved. She understood Andromeda and Andromeda understood her and that counted for nothing when she left. Andromeda also understood Bellatrix and in a way that Narcissa had not understood then. She had not understood the seething, clenched teeth rows they could get into. Bella had taught Andromeda to duel in more ways than one. Bellatrix wanted the best for all of them. She would claw her way through anything, put up with nothing so that her baby sisters could live with the protection of her ferocity and discipline. How dare Andromeda throw that back in her face! How dare she throw away her gifts, her brilliance, her beauty, her name?

It was not until Narcissa finally sat at the table with all of them that she understood Bellatrix for who she was and what she might have always been. She understood then what it must have meant to carry the burden of your rebellious sister and to watch out for the youngest, sometimes whiny sister. She had worked for them all this time and had nothing to show for it. Narcissa did not know the muggle words but she would have recognized Bellatrix as a general, top brass. Here her focus, her intensity could be put to use for something she believed in if for no other reason that it would benefit her directly, the family name and all the wealth and protections it conferred. It would punish any detractors but Narcissa did not think too deeply about that. If Bella could throw Andromeda away and Andromeda could abandon all of them, she could only trust the family she made. For what it was worth. She placed her hand on her stomach and waited for the introduction she knew was forthcoming. She smiled to herself, to her husband. She answered Lord Voldemort's questions about her pregnancy. She smiled at him, at her sister sitting at his side. She smiled at her cousins Regulus, Evan. She remained gracious to people she attended school with and those she didn't know alike. She nodded and laughed at the right places. Bellatrix was not impressed nor embarrassed but Narcissa could really be a phony. She could really turn on the charm. Pft. They were to start a meeting. She was given the option to remain. She behaved as if she knew nothing, suspected nothing but knew enough to leave. She chose to leave sensing immediately that very few people were ever given the option. There was family at that table. Her sister, her cousins, her husband. She excused herself and the baby she carried with a gentle bow and a warm, sincere smile and walked out of the room without so much as a glance behind her and why should she have?

What had they called themselves? Death Eaters? It was meant as a joke, the way it was said, the way they reacted to the name but, if it was the pregnancy, the name or both, it made her stomach turn. It was not until she saw the way her sister looked at him, Lord Voldemort, that she finally understood completely. She would lose both of her sisters, she already lost both of her sisters. It must be difficult to not have an equal, a match. When she met Lucius, she knew. Yes, he was vain, pompous. But he loved her, treated her well and gave her the best of everything he could, which was no small task, but it wasn't like the Malfoy vault was filled with cobwebs. Nor were the Lestrange vaults (plural) and coffers (also plural). Bellatrix had looked bored at her own wedding. And here she sat in between her husband and Lord Voldemort. And while Bellatrix signalled nothing of any great significance, Narcissa sensed the changed. She could see Bellatrix eyes sparkle and she was even lovelier. She, at the very least, respected this man a great deal. Bellatrix would not follow a fool of a man for anything and that would have been enough for Narcissa. She might have followed too but she had seen a small part of what he had done to Bellatrix. Narcissa knew, but not how, that this man, this Lord Voldemort, was not who he said he was. Her own family vouched for this man, all well-bred, good families. He said the right things the right way. He knew the customs. She knew that he must be a quick study but pedigree could not be bought or faked and she would know just as Bellatrix should have also given what she would end up fighting for.

It was not long after the first meeting she attended but the light of Narcissa's presence dimmed eventually. Narcissa could not understand why her sister would allow anyone to-nevermind. If she could turn on the charm, she knew Bella could and why she didn't could not be helped now. Whatever the reason was, Narcissa would not be able to talk her older sister out of it. Bellatrix sat silently. The side of her face bled into the collar of her dark purple top and vest and stuck her black hair to her skull. The silk of the vest, like her hair looked only shinier and slightly darker for the wetness. Whatever happened she wouldn't say. Narcissa held a cool cloth up to her sister's face. It took longer than Narcissa thought it would but Bellatrix finally swatted Narcissa's hand away. Narcissa, pregnant and maternal and a little confused and very scared sat with the idea long enough to know that Bellatrix wouldn't dare anything more than that. Narcissa sat with the tea towel knotted in her hands staring forward and let her rage build-up in her heart. She turned, slapped her sister's arm and sighed heavily. She then set the cloth back on Bellatrix' face, gently as ever. She wanted to kiss Bellatrix on her cleaned, throbbing temple but thought better of it. Bellatrix for her part wanted to hold Narcissa's hand but thought the better of it. They weren't children and couldn't or wouldn't protect each other anymore if they ever even could. Bellatrix did not know about Narcissa's walks through the garden and could not imagine that Lord Voldemort could be that way, that he had it in him to be so solicitous. Narcissa did not know what exactly went on at those meetings and did not want to. She did not want to know. She knew it was bad, that her sister carried one hurt from long ago and could amplify it to an extreme and sought out a type of affection that Narcissa found poisonous and destructive even as a child. She had to see for herself after being summoned to the table not too see who Lord Voldemort was but who her sister was. Bella had not had an older sister; Bella had not had herself to protect her.

The garden walks with Lord Voldemort would continue, if only to find a way to maneuver gently over time, over the span of her life if she had to. She did not know then what he could be like, she only had ideas. One of those ideas was sitting next to her, bleeding. One of those ideas was her sister. Narcissa patted the towel across her Bellatrix' forehead and did not need to see tears to know that somewhere deep inside Bellatrix was crying. This she discovered much later was uncommon and odd. Other people did not marshal all their hurt, roll it into figurative small plugs and jam them into their own tear ducts. Narcissa wiped Bellatrix' face and held the now warm towel like she was cleaning a delicate and historically significant statue. Bellatrix moved her open hand towards her sister's lap as her sister reached for it without looking and they held hands under Narcissa's big belly. Another generation. If you had seen them from far away, you would have seen two people who looked the same and yet not anything alike and how kind of the one to care for this sick looking, dying one. And on closer look, you would wonder why you thought she was sick at all since she seemed full and vibrant, even striking, and it was in fact the sick one taking care of the healthy one. This might be a rehearsal, a form of mimicry or therapy to reverse roles. You might have thought 'how lovely and strange and sad'.


	18. Chapter 17

They always had the same radio static in their heads. There was too much buzzing to bother with so usually he didn't. He just dispensed with it. Them. He dispensed them: their thoughts, the people themselves. He had not been able to clear his own thoughts otherwise he would have done it sooner and he did want to know what the fuss was about. But what had he even done? She was dead. That was her body. That was her wand. Could it have been the wand? She had said nothing of significance had she? He hadn't been listening too closely. Truth be told, he had more important things on his mind. The list of things he had to do grew and shrank with every curse, spell, deflection. It did cross his mind to ask her to join him but that was a passing thought, even whimsical. Her skills were wasted as on becoming an auror. She had chosen the wrong side. The sooner she died, the sooner he could attend to a number of other things. Right now the list was not chiefest amongst his thoughts, it was that insignificant, common wand.

He went in for a closer look. Dorcas' wand loosened from her grip and it too, like her, lay still on the ground. Lord Voldemort surveyed the scene. He glanced around and looked at her, then the wand, then her again and the wand again. He stepped closer. He did not understand what had just happened. She had asked him a question, right? What had he said? He felt uneasy at the lack of footing he possessed in the moment and the fury of not knowing started to creep into his mind. It would make his neck muscles tight and weigh him down at the shoulders later but now he could try to understand very quickly what had happened. He stared at the wand. It was insignificant alright but why hadn't he picked it up then? Why hadn't he gone to get it inspected at least? Severus might have assessed it, he certainly could do it himself but that would take too much time and to find out it was worthless? There was nothing in the lore that he could think of that would connect her to anything of any significance even her mythos was contemporary if you could even call it a myth. Give it a year and she would be all but forgotten, he told himself. Sooner than a year. But his walk out through the woods he could not. He could feel himself paving over the memory just by thinking of it. He could not get this exchange out of his mind, first because of its oddity and the confusion it inspired by him. He had not been confused or unsettled by magic in a very long time.

He had his back exposed for part of this exchange and she had done nothing. She would not have been able to do anything yet she could have tried. It was not as if she was too principled to cut someone to ribbons, he knew as much. So what was it, what had just happened? He visited old haunts as best as he could gathering information like an invisible, giant, silent magnet. Everything he needed would find its way to him because of the work he had done as a young man. All of his seeds would grow to trees and would bear everlasting fruit to the end of time. He was away longer than he anticipated but everything he needed to check, everything that could be confirmed was safe and in its proper place. He knew he did not have to explain anything and something like gratitude filled the space where his heart should have been. He felt relief that he did not have to lie because he did not have to explain. He could have said anything or nothing and who would question him? Part of the news preceded him anyway. War tended to do this, accelerate the speed in which information traveled. They said he killed her, another layer of information, another layer of the story. He could have gone back to London immediately after and the news would still have raced him and found a way there first.

Lord Voldemort had known all along but, to make that clear to himself, to understand what had happened, which he still did not, at least he knew that he had to admit to himself that he had not cast the spell that killed Dorcas Meadowes. He did not know what happened but no one else ever needed to know that. He knew that his accomplishments outweighed the death of one evasive ex-auror. He knew, had convinced himself that whatever had happened did not count for much now since she was dead. He had seen her go down. He knew almost by instinct, or by experience, that her body and the living part of her no longer occupied the same spaces. How that happened was irrelevant. He knew, he was reasonably sure, that she had no quiet skill that would allow her to come back. She was gone. He crossed off her name on the list in his mind.


	19. Chapter 18

Several months earlier, The Daily Prophet, Rita Skeeter:  
A muggle woman who will remain unnamed, went missing from her home in Dorset. The bodies of her two sons, 7 and 11, and husband were found along with the bodies of two unrelated people, another man and a woman, which were concealed in the cellar of the house. A wizard neighbor, a Marlene McKinnon, alerted the ministry. It was the aurors, specifically a Dorcas Meadowes, who noticed that the woman was missing but confirmed the violence of the murders were, to them, clearly of a magical source. The muggle authorities were informed through the proper channels and another body, that of a 4 year old boy, was found soon after and not far from the home when it was revealed that the two bodies in the cellar were unrelated to the family or to one another. The Sussex man had gone missing several days prior and the woman remains unidentified in the muggle papers. It was after this assessment that Rufus Scrimgeour, Field Head of the South Eastern Aurors Division, made clear in a briefing that if the body of the young boy had been there when the team of aurors arrived first, they would have found it and the Auror Office suspects further foul play and tampering with artifacts. The unidentified woman was confirmed to be what some still, inappropriately, refer to as a "fringe witch". Her wand is from an unknown source and she did not attend Hogwarts. Further confirmation and clarification from the ministry forthcoming.

Rufus Scrimgeour did not trust very many people but he lived by the old ways. He knew of Dorcas because of Alastor, he knew Alastor because of Kingsley and so on. He trusted all of those people in that line (and in that order…) because of the person before them but that they had all proven their own merits with time. He trusted that no one in attendance of the "briefing", had said anything or maybe they had? This reporter certainly hadn't been invited. It would be time to make further amendments to the list of people he trusted again and every time fewer people survived to make it to his confidence but many more people moved up in importance. That Dorcas was named was a matter of security as was the other witch named and for that reason, he trusted that neither had gone to find a reporter for the Daily Prophet (if he was in the habit of rolling his eyes, he would have). This was a generality given the state of tension that muggles, historically, remained unnamed but that in an investigation of this scale and sensitivity, everyone involved should have remained anonymous. What disturbed him was how difficult it would be to work with the muggle authorities, every division of the Auror Office was stretched thin and, even worse, some of the aurors he did trust were unavailable due to their own assignments. This, too, was dangerous. An auror could not just "take assignments" on his or her own whim. This wasn't the nineteen-thirties! And why did they have so many separate divisions for such a small country? All of them could be consolidated. People were dying in the field because of the lack of centralized information.

Rufus Scrimgeour could feel his stomach growling as he turned the paper over. That's it, all of that information in such a short section and no further explanation. How this reporter got the information and from where, he would never find out. But that little bit of information brought up more questions. What alerted this McKinnon that anything was amiss? How did she contact the ministry so fast, did she have a direct contact? Auror's were effective if they were reached on time but, and he loved them all, they were not generally the first to respond, especially with their steadily dwindling numbers. He ignored his hunger to reread the paper. In fact, it was usually a muggle who tipped them off in cases such as this. How did the aurors find out so quickly? Had someone tampered with artifacts? Who were all of these muggles? Why and how and, and "fringe witch"? They were no longer allowed to say that? This was also, very literally, news to him (he suppressed another eye roll) and stopped reading mid-sentence. He made his way in the direction of something to snack on to see what he could do to untangle the mystery of this missing woman.

Rita's article was full of inaccuracies but she did what she could with the time and resources she had available which were constrained mainly by the time and resources the Auror Office had available. She took her job very seriously and she had made a choice to find and get to and report on the truth as it was made available. Her chubby, slightly shiny face made her look even younger than she was but she was determined to report on the horrors of the war and didn't let skeptical looks deter her from getting the potion, hot from the cauldron, so to speak. She could research all of it and write a richer piece but she was getting more assignments at work also and the head of her department insisted she write more and more side angle pieces. People knew there was a war, they didn't always want to read about it. The paper needed more levity, he said as Rita scribbled away at her pad so quickly and with so many amendments that she had to redip her quill several times in a pot of ink floating in the air just in front of her.

She tried to explain repeatedly. She could get more information on the murders and the whos and whatsits. She could find more sources. The department head sat at the edge of his desk listening to this earnest, dumpy girl witch insist on how important war time information was. He couldn't tell her that, in times like these, there would be questions asked that wouldn't be answered for several more generations. What other source could she find more reputable than lion-farted Rufus (a difficult source, he didn't understand how she got the interview) or who would care after a month. They were dead, the missing woman was also most likely dead and they were surrounded by ever more people dying everyday. She should be so lucky that she even wrote the piece in the first place. And if she could get the information she did, her skill could be put to better use writing what people actually wanted to read. She seemed so eager to work. So eager to please. He sighed without saying a word and handed her a strip of parchment from his desk and Rita beamed and turned on her heels, triumphant. The department head watched her gold curls with a patch of black and dark blue at the corner bounced out of the way and occasionally revealed a dark splotch on her shoulder where her floating inkwell sometimes bumped into her. All her tops had one. This one looks like a seal, he thought. When she left the office with the door closed behind her, she stopped at the door to read what was written on the parchment: "Foraging Muggle Style. How to tell and acorn from and anchor." The department head could just make out from the frosted glass that her shoulders sank.

If she had been given the assignment, she might have found out. She could focus and research and analyze and, Merlin's beard, did she know her way around a parchment with a quill. She wrote the pieces that trotted in small script at the edge of the paper while she wrote about the war still and without being published. She would have the department head look at the work and hand it back with another pointless article assignment over the manuscript. But she kept writing. And it was through luck and that practice that, after having it checked for accuracy, the piece she wrote on the attacks at St. Mungo's made it to the papers in a shortened form. Because she had inadvertently broken the story, they ran the full article the next day. It wasn't until that explosive article written after the first war, that she got to choose her own articles and was given access to the same dataset that her editors were given. She saw for herself when an article did well. She chose to sit during the trials and wrote what she was most passionate about. And she earned money. She would sit with her own assistant and review the Editor Owls and saw her name repeated over and over and the acclaim and praise heaped onto her. She conducted interviews, she eventually discovered the mystery of the Dorset Bodies. She patented a self-filling quill. She earned more money. The department head sometimes handed her manuscripts back but, this time without the assignments. She wrote faster and with greater intensity. With this, and over time, she would learn that the department head was right. No one wanted to read about the war exclusively. And she found that she did not want to write about it exclusively either. She tried writing on Quidditch. More letters of praise. She mentioned, what she believed was a minor detail, the husband of one of the players. The letters asked for more information. She reported on it. They asked for more information. She shopped and noticed that people gave her interviews easier. She shopped some more, wrote more, earned more. She changed a detail, rather played it up, threw in some prose. The department head looked at her over his desk. She left dejected but found the same article in full with a disclaimer that had to be revealed with a spell, the first time the Daily Prophet expanded its "book" since the early first war years. Owls flooded the lobby of the Daily Prophet. So many howlers were sent that the ministry wondered if there shouldn't be a law, some regulation to prevent such an influx. Rita was a snake, a viper and on and on and she preferred the feeling she got with the praise.

Then the number of Daily Prophets had to be increased after that. The sales went up and up and up. They had to print several copies in one day to meet demand. People requested an evening edition. The department head, who stayed on in an advisory role after the war years, knocked at the door that had once been his. Rita had trimmed down considerably. Her silk skirt suit was the shade of yellow if it had a voice and had been caught mid scream, trimmed in purple fur from a definitely extinct animal. He shut the door behind him and leaned against it temporarily only to push himself of its frame slightly. Rita looked over her glasses, agitated as she dictated her next piece. He motioned a rectangle in the air. She turned still talking and picked up stacks of parchment to hand to the former department head. She'd cut her hair shorter which exposed the top fabric of her sleek, shiny, (loud) jacket. There was no spot on either of her shoulders. The former department head left the office with the stack of her articles for editing and proofing and animating.

He had been a good reporter. He was always honest, fair and articulate but he had been an even better editor. He could spot a serious writer from across the room. As department head, he had nurtured a team of editors and writers, the numbers of which swelled during his tenure even with the wizarding population steadily decreasing by the day. He knew where to place an article and years of watching people and listening had served him well. He had a job for life doing what he loved surrounded by people who loved what they did also. The former department head, now forever advisor, left Rita's used-to-be-his office and smiled to himself at how good he had been at his job.


	20. Chapter 19

They had watched the sunset over the woods from the sky. They had sat on brooms over the water and now Basil sat by the fire sipping a spiked, warmed butterbeer by the fire. He surveyed the events and knew he would sleep well and deeply that evening. He knew in the way he had known other things. His mother and uncles had asked where he got the gift from and why his divination's marks hadn't been higher. It had been a running joke and yet… Lydia was telling Philippa about the intricacies of certain obscure magic but everyone was listening casually or lost in their own thoughts. Pieces of their conversation would float over to him. The sun was well set but every time he closed his eyes he could see it setting again and the beauty of it, the warm, orange, brightness of it. He smiled at the memory of it buoyant on his broom. He could feel the warmth of the sun on his face even as he knew it was the fire in front of them.

Basil doesn't have the actual memory of his aunt's wedding but had heard the story so many times that he felt that he remembered it but he is in the wrong place. He doesn't know why he started crying and reached out to his aunt at the altar because in this memory of him, about him, he is older and sitting in the back row watching himself and his family. Baby Basil starts crying and he reaches out to his aunt and his mother scoops him up and the audience ahhs. Poor baby he hears someone to his right. The women sitting directly in front of him turns and makes a sincere pouting face to her neighbor. Baby Basil redoubles his efforts and screams even louder and as his mother is getting up to exit, bent double down the aisle, even as everyone can hear him and see them both, he calls out to his aunt. His voice comes out sad but determined. He can't pronounce all of the sounds in the correct order yet but everyone knows who he's talking about. His mother winces and tries to be discreet carrying him out and he wriggles out of her arms and she has to scoop him up like a falling sand. He makes it so that she can't hold him properly and she is this close to the floor trying to get him back into her arms and he senses and opportunity and makes a mad, wobbly scramble for the altar.

His mother might as well stand up and run for him, it would be easier, but it's a wedding and everyone feels like they don't want to be the reason for a ruined wedding (especially their own sister's!) even though that can't happen because a baby running for his aunt doesn't know any better and anyway, that's the best part. Basil's mother isn't fast enough and he, in his non-memory can see her face drawn and turning. He watches himself as a baby with a detached amusement peeking over other people's head and shoulders as his mom scoops him up again right before he gets to his aunt. His father thinks this is all very funny even as he makes a half-hearted gesture to stop his own child but he is curious how this will all play out and isn't so concerned about ruining a wedding because he's been married for a few years now and is the father of this very toddler and knows that the wedding is the easy part.

Baby Basil screams even harder but they both look up. Baby Basil and Memory him look at his aunt and her arms are outstretched and she's smiling and looks so sad because her heart hurts for her first baby. Her favorite person. Her sister holds her child. It's ok, his aunt's face says. She nods and his mother hands him over to her. His aunt wraps her arms around him and he wraps his arms around her neck and they are holding onto each other. She turns back around to face the officiant but she is rocking back and forth and her cheek is rested on the top of her nephew's head. People are crying in the audience. He doesn't look at his uncle in his memory and doesn't remember that his aunt looked at him deferring and sweetly and asked "may I", knowing he would say, "yes, of course". That he could give her everything but the one thing she wanted. It is only the two of them. Baby Basil in his aunt's arms and even in his own memory of other people's memories the audience is gone and even Adult Basil is gone and it is just him as baby and his aunt holding onto each other. They are trapped or are protecting each other from nothing in a place that doesn't exist, even in other people's memories.

Basil chalks this behavior up to the gift that all children and animals have to sense things and to act at the right moment. His aunt cannot have children and his uncle only wanted to make her happy and for her to be happy. Maybe they are or aren't, Basil doesn't think too much about it. She is still the same funny, bright woman. Basil is still her first and favorite baby even though he is no longer a child. There is a picture of this moment somewhere. His uncle looking at them and smiling sadly and maybe even he knows. Maybe that's why they are still together because he knew, if she could pick one, a child or him, it would not have been him but, there was not and there would not be a child so there they were.

The butterbeer and the sound of fire is making him sleepy. The memories are making him sleepy. If they could have managed it, another day like this would be ideal but that will not be possible. The day in itself was a miracle. He is glad he brought his own tent and kitting utilitarian though they were. He would most likely wake up in the middle of the night or not sleep at all and think a dreamy, subconscious think. He will think everything and nothing and will or won't remember his ideas and thoughts in the morning. If Lydia and Philippa keep it up, he will not be able to walk around or maybe he can join them in the discussion. Maybe he can learn something. After all, there are several people here who work for the ministry. Maybe he could be an auror. He will ask Dorcas in the morning, he decides because she is no longer there. Fabian is also gone. Good for them, he thinks.

Basil ended up falling asleep in the chair. He woke up to Gideon nudging him awake. Philippa was already entering another tent. Basil did not know Lydia had already gone to sleep. He did not know if Dorcas or Fabian were back. He stretched his arms and got up heavy with interrupted sleep. Gideon nodded blearily and made a wave of his hand that said, IwouldnothavemindedsleepinginthechairbutIwaswokenupandthereforealsohadtowakeyouupbecauseIcouldn'tjustleaveyoutherebecausethatwouldmakemelookbadeventhoughwewouldhavebothbeenfinesleepingonthesechairs. Gideon entered the tent Basil had packed and was heard collapsing onto the bed. Basil sensed the deep inhale and soft exhale of someone who falls asleep easily. He heard the body language of someone who loved his sleep. Gideon hadn't realized or cared whose tent he entered, he had just walked into the closest one that Philippa hadn't. Basil entered a tent that wasn't his own, the one Philippa had entered nor the one he knew to be the Prewitt's and found it unpopulated and exceedingly well appointed. There was a small chandelier floating at the top of the low ceilinged tent giving of a soft, sparkly glow and two beds dressed in crisp bed clothes. The walls of the tent were made of heavy tapestry with a deep blue pattern shifting subtly and soothingly on an even darker blue field. Candles stood at regular intervals against the walls in pewter holders. Trunks sat at the end of each bed covered with heavy dark quilts, just in case and a tiled sink and shower stood in the corner. He quietly thanked Gideon for his love of sleep as he tucked himself happily into one of the beds. He would ask to be an auror all right if this is what the salary could get you. When he closed his eyes he saw the sunset again, felt warm all over and fell into a deep, luxurious sleep.

Fabian arrived back to camp first. The embers of the fire were still glowing and he recognized the awkwardness of the situation. He did not know who was sleeping where or with whom. He knew two people were in one tent and the others were populated by a person each but the combinations were endless. Lydia and/or Dorcas had brought two tents, he and his brother had brought theirs and Basil most likely brought his own. Fabian had gone back to look at the water and had come back later than he thought. While he was considering what to do he turned at the noise of a branch breaking. Dorcas came out of the woods. She had wandered around to stretch her legs and found herself walking and walking until she got bored. Fabian nodded at her. They were both tired and the day stretched in front of them and behind them in both directions. Fabian, Gideon and Basil camped often enough and with little luxury. Fabian could sleep outside once he got the fire going again. Dorcas could use his tent. He started to walk towards the fire and turned at her insistent quietness. He looked up at her standing at the door of his tent, waiting. Fabian went over, held the tent door open for Dorcas and she walked in and, he let the door, which was only a piece of fabric anyway, drape solidly behind them.


	21. Chapter 20

When the second war rolled around, there was no point in fighting to write about it. Everyone was allowed to until they weren't. Because of the article, Rita had been given access to the trials and earned a reputation for her reporting. This time, it was strangely the same. She did not want to write about missing people, missing children. She found that she didn't want to write about blown up bridges, cars set on fires that couldn't be put out with water. So she didn't. Even then, even as she enjoyed writing about the war, as much as one could, she could feel everyone becoming tired of having to be confronted with their reality in writing. She wrote the articles and tucked them away and then she stopped writing them all together. The first war had made her famous. The first war had made her wealthy and it had made her tired. When she did write an article or a paper, she could feel the old rush return. She could feel the old feeling of hunching over a stack of parchment. She remembered that once upon a time, she had had to re-dip her quill several times an article and it made her smile and she was proud of her herself, she was proud for herself for what she had done. She would look up from days of writing and refilling coffee at the longform article and feel the satisfaction of a fresh start and a new ending. She filed those papers away with the pieces of other projects. As far as her writing was concerned, the war ended after the trials. As far as she was concerned, the details and the truth of the wars were no longer worth sharing.

If Rita had had it in her, she could have found out more about the missing woman. She could have untangled some of the details. Maybe she would know a fuller story but she was already assigned to another piece and took the opportunity. You must remember how things were then. They were quiet and then they weren't and then it would be quiet for such a long time that people might forget and then…

It went something like this: Marlene offered to be the one who said she alerted the ministry because she lived so close to the woman, that it would make it more believable. Rita could not have known that Dorcas had arrived on the scene first with the Prewett brothers and a man named Basil. It was because of this article that didn't exist that Rufus Scrimgeour would never know that he had been correct. The usual order of things, that a muggle did indeed let a witch know is exactly what happened because one had. Phillipa when they arrived back from camp to drop Basil off first was the one to sound the alarm. It was she who pointed out the looping peculiarity of fog and sparkle, the congregation of what appeared to be starlight hovering over the missing woman's family home. Everyone thought that her insistence on turning around to check was from her desire to be on a broom again. Her insistence initially made them all question this fog's meaning and relevance but she had been correct. It did seem magical. It was magic. During the trials of the first war, the name for this magic and its purpose would be explicitly revealed. It had been termed the Dark Mark partly for its irony. It was a shimmering, greenish, lovely even. It did not take its full shape until the intervening years, the time between the wars, when in honor of their fallen leader, the light and fog was organized into the same symbol their progenitors used to bear on their bodies: a snake, slithering through a skull. So when the second war began, when the mark showed up again, people knew and understood and were afraid. But then, after one of the happiest days of some people's lives and the worst for others, a muggle woman was making her way towards the sea pulled by an unknown and unknowable force having left a mystery behind her.

Close your eyes. You are closing your eyes so you can accurately imagine what is about to be described and also so that when you understand what you are imagining, you can open your eyes again and realize you are safe and not actually witnessing what you are imaging. Have you closed them yet? Good. The missing woman was dead but you, like Rita and Rufus and the wizarding England that read the Daily Prophet, must have known that. You are sitting on a cloud or rather, maybe you are the cloud. If you look down below, there is the deep turquoise of the sea. If you look out in front of you, you are looking at a cliff face and you can see part of the top of the cliff straggly with itchy, green seagrass that can survive the saline air coming off of the ocean and the cliff face itself angled toward the ground, is not black when dry, but here it never is. The cliff is glistening from the moisture in the air and below that you can see the bright sand. The day will end soon but it is still bright and you notice the sand in a little patch on your right is moving. But it isn't sand at all. It's a person? You hop onto another cloud or merge with the vapor that comes from a crashing wave. It IS a person. You wonder if you should become a grain of sand or the cliff face itself. But stay where you are to understand. So you lean in as best as you can and this person, as they continue walking along the shore, you realize is a woman and you know this, as far as your knowing goes, because the woman is naked. Ah, now you get it! This happens sometimes. But, then again, you think, not here usually. How did she get down here, you wonder. How could any one get down here? There is no discernible foot path for miles and when high tide comes in, the very sand she is walking on will be completely submerged by several feet of water. Something must be wrong. Something is wrong. You lean in closer.

She is walking in a strange way. She is upright and looking ahead and yet her limbs are somehow behind her. Something is trailing behind her but she is all there. And that's when she trips over her own feet but she keeps walking. She does not break her fall with her hands her feet keep going forward and she uses her hands to get up after her head plows a little trough in the sand. Yes, something is very wrong. When she stands up she continues as if nothing has happened, you force yourself to sit on an atom in the air in front of her and one of her eyes is filled with sand grains that she makes no attempt to get out of her eyes. She's not even blinking. You realize that you shouldn't have tried to understand. You have missed your opportunity to turn away. You know she is not ok but- You go back to your perch on a cloud or over the ocean.

You watch her stop in front a clearing in the rock, a fissure. She stops and turns her head as if looking around but something tells you that she can't actually perceive what she's. Maybe she can see but she doesn't know or understand what's she's. Nevermind. She finds what she must have been looking for and slams her hand onto a sharp edge of jutting from the cliff wall. You wince. If you have to open your eyes, please do. What is she doing? What is wrong? Are you, alright? Good. Close your eyes again.

You decide to follow her now, maybe you can help but, no. You feel something drop in your stomach, the fissure is more like an opening (was it before and you just hadn't noticed? But it wasn't like that before, was it?) and you follow her into the opening. You can be yourself now. If you're going to help, you will need all of yourself. You can't do anything as a cloud or seafoam or a teensy atom. Her hand is bloodied but even her blood is the wrong shade, it's behaving incorrectly and you don't want to think it but there should be more of it but it's also very dark in here. You feel a feather, having fallen from the base of your head, fall to rest in between your shoulder blades which makes the hair on your neck stand up. When you reach for it there is nothing there but you felt something all the same. You are momentarily distracted by this feeling, going so far as to check your hand for a feather you know was never there. There is nothing and it's dark, you can barely make out the outline of your own hand. When you look up, you notice the woman walking forward getting shorter in a strange way and now your shoes are wet. She has waded into a shallow and you understand now that there is a shimmer coming from what you understand is water. You back away. Wait! you want to say. Turn around! but the words are stuck in your throat and she can't hear you because you're not there and, if you were, she can't hear you because she is listening to something else somewhere else in her.

She walks into the water thats up to her knees and she's not doing that thing where you feel the heaviness of water, she's not trying to keep balance, she's walking straight in and then she drops out of view like she's walked over a sand shelf but she doesn't bob back up. She is gone. You keep backing up because it's very dark. You want to turn around and run but before you do, your back bumps into the wall which makes you jump away from it. You turn and find the way is shut.

You came through this way, right? The distance wasn't even that far, was it? You're not even thinking about the woman anymore but you know she is there, you saw her disappear into the water. You saw her and you know she is there and you know she knows you were there and did nothing to stop her but you cannot get out. You think, maybe, you too can slam your hand against something if only you can be back on the beach on the sand. You can't put yourself on a cloud from inside of this place because you don't know if it's still there. The tide will rise soon and you don't know if it will come in and flood this place, if this water is the same as the sea, if the saltiness of the sea will make whatever is in the water float. You have, again, backed yourself into what you know is the inside of a sea cliff. And you feel the salty stickiness of the wall and the discomfort of wanting to sweat when you are in a cold place. You can feel night falling in the cave even as you know it is still day outside. Don't be so silly!, you tell yourself. You just got in here! but you feel the height of the cliffs around you how expansive this place is and as your eyes adjust, the glow in front of you does not reassure you. The light is swallowed up by the great darkness around it. You were right about the water that made your shoes wet. It looks like a black pane of glass where the light hits it.

How is the water so still, though? Not even a ripple on its surface. You can't let your own mind fool you into thinking the woman did not fall into it or even that she didn't exist. But you stare at the wet, shining, still water mesmerized. The light is getting ever but only slightly brighter as your eyes keep adjusting and adjusting and you know your mind is playing trick on you because you feel like if you stand there long enough, the entire cave will be filled with the brightest, cleanest, coldest light you have ever seen. The darkness was bad enough but, this is worse. You open your eyes.


	22. Chapter 21

Mostly war was boring. They kept odd hours and that was usually the most exciting part of the job. Dorcas, like everyone else would go on her rounds and collect information or just as often as not, probably, even more often, they did not collect anything at all.

In her fieldwork as an auror, even as far back in training, she had witnessed more consistently horrifying events. She talked people down from ledges, she nursed her bruises and the scars of others. There had been so much blood. When things became difficult, she called on the reserve from one of her first days out in the field and found whatever it was in herself to get whatever the job was, done. She went in with the intent to save the greatest number of people, to spare as many people pain. She did this often enough that it became second nature and she didn't have to call on anything because she was now that person. She had called on herself so many times that she recognized that she was always there. She was the woman and the auror she wanted to be. And she recognized, too, that people could and did get hurt. She was not there to save because she didn't have those powers so she just did her job as the person she imagined and one day she received an owl from Alastor Moody. She had met him several more times since he had visited the flat she shared with Lydia and other former schoolmates but this would be different. She was different now. He noticed. She smiled easier, she already knew Professor Dumbledore so maybe that helped. By the end of their conversation, when she agreed to be in the Order of the Phoenix, she had thought she understood what they would be doing. She understood why she'd been chosen but what is this saying about expectations? Learn to swim, even gillyweed fails.

After she was called to use the very same skills that made her a great auror and just as things were starting to take a turn for the worse or better (depending on who you spoke with) they got very dull, very quickly. She didn't want to have to do her job but as some of us know what use are you without the use of your gifts with no opportunity to use the things that make you who you are. She was an auror and there would always be use for her gifts. But there was a time during the war, when that was not the case. They felt like they sat around a lot, they would get information on the whereabouts of some one person or another and find they were too late. They would get there and find this small group of people already dead and the Order and Dorcas were to play defensive when she was so used to stopping things ahead of time or preventing violence from escalating or standing in between the source and object of the violence. She was asked to be reactive because they didn't have enough information, they didn't have the resources to do otherwise. She stared at these dead people feeling nothing.

What could be done at this point? Nothing. What was the point of a revelatory spell? She knew who was responsible for this violence but, she did it anyway, a reflex. How had they even learned to break up the Dark Mark? They had done it so many times. It was all so boring. Maybe this could be said another way. The major difference between her life earlier and the war was that there were so many more dead people. More dead people than she could count in every state of dead one could hope to never imagine. Take my word for it, most of the violence and death was senseless in the truest sense of the word. What did any of these people have to do with any tactical advantage? None. They didn't even serve to hinder the opposing side, they were just dead and it had something to do with the other side being just as bored as the Order or angry. Angry at what Dorcas couldn't fathom. All of them, most of them had grown up in the wealthiest households had every convenience known to the magical and to muggle alike and then this. An entire war over wanting more of what you already had? They were violent and bored already, so when everyone was dead, how much more violent and bored would they be? How much more could they be? And then what?

They were at someone's house again, for the umpteenth time, and had found, yes, someone had died. Dorcas set to breaking the mark up above them while Gideon pointed his wand to the ground. They heard a thump and smelled the acrid muskiness of the punctured gas main. The muggle authorities would show up and think there had been a gas leak. That would make them mad. The other side. It should probably be mentioned that at the time, the term "dark arts" had fallen out of favor. It was too… Too… non-descriptive. It was not until much later that it came back in style with the rise of Lord Voldemort but it was argued, certainly in that time, that there could be no such thing. So much wizard magic had to do with the wizard or witch who did the magic. Anyone capable of doing any magic might do so and so one could not do "dark magic" or be a "dark wizard". Many wizards and witches of a certain generation grew up not saying things like that. It was the other side. And while the war raged on, people thought maybe that was too clunky but people were dying too quickly for semantics so they defaulted back to the "dark". But depending on when the witch grew up, as in Dorcas' case, they would always be considered the "other side". And maybe they shouldn't have done that, bait the other side but whether they did or not was not going to stop them from killing more people anyway. They might as well give the families some peace. They might as well give the neighbors some peace. A gas leak was terrifying, yes fine but the alternative would have broken centuries' old rules and what would they say?

These people, they want you dead because you have less power than them and they don't know what to do with their own.

These people, they have lots of money but no imagination so you are somehow a threat for some inexplicable reason.

These people, they are mad and evil. You exist and are therefore in their way. They actually did you a favor. Now you no longer have to die because you are already dead.

Gas leak it was.

Maybe they were looking for something. Maybe they could find something. The thought crossed her mind the first time, the second, the third, the fourth the. After searching the homes, sometimes for hours, going back in the quiet of the night to find a clue they would usually find nothing. She enlisted the help of specialists. There was always nothing because there was nothing or the thing had been taken but really there was nothing. The bodies were the things to be found, the bodies were the clue. People were going to keep dying because of some reason called war. She would keep watch and yawn through her shifts as everyone else did. She would be called to look for information in places where life had left. She would sleep. She would wake up; she would do the job and then do all of it all over again the next day. People still had to eat, sleep, drink, shit, laugh, cry as necessary or when they could or not at all. Everyone would end up only a few of several ways with one destination.

Someday they would all die. Someday they'd all be dead, dead, dead. Whether they would find the remains or not, dead. Did the family know or not? Dead. Fighting for either side? Dead. The work became harder when Philippa left which coincided in an uptick in violence. The direct confrontations started again. There were many more bodies that the members of the Order of the Phoenix had to meet before they died. Lots of things happened all at once all together and she reflected after one such meeting in particular that this was a waste of time. They had pointless jobs, everyone would end up the same way. She knew what Alastor wanted to say to this and he knew that she knew so he didn't say it. He had a feeling then, that she didn't mean it but another idea started to form about her, several ideas. He tried to understand them all and put them in the correct order. Then they received word. The old channels spoke and Lupin heard and soon after , they held something like a meeting to determine what they should do to protect Dorcas since Lord Voldemort was looking for her. If he knew about the Order, he did not care but she was now being hunted and that should have made her afraid. Instead, it was comforting. She really was good at her job, then.

Maybe excitement isn't the right word but she felt prepared. All of her training had led up to this. Lord Voldemort wasn't so threatening in the city with everyone so close by. She did not want to die but maybe she wouldn't. Or rather, maybe she could defeat him. She would end the war. That's what it had felt like. This was the final test of her will and her training and she would not fail. But Alastor got yet another idea which he did not have time to understand. It was only right that he be the one the idea visited. He had recommended her to be in the Order and now he insisted that she go into hiding. She must go into hiding. He became paranoid and that unsettled her but there were more disturbing things. He had assumed that she hated the way he did it, the way he said it but that she made peace with it in the cottage as scared as she was as paranoid as she, too, became.

Emmeline, long after Dorcas di-. Emmeline had asked Alastor. All of them had wondered but she had needed to know. How did he get Dorcas to leave. What had he said to make her pack her things and go hide? They could understand other people going into hiding, they could even understand the threat of Lord Voldemort but she hadn't been afraid, had she? Dorcas, like all aurors, lived with some mild, low-grade fear constantly, no? What had he said?

"What did you say to her?", Emmeline had screamed, taken over by some hysteria. Anyone who saw her then, anyone, would have said that her pupils had turned a different color, she was that enraged.

He had sent Dorcas away, not because of Lord Voldemort, though that was reason enough, but because he thought she was losing her mind. She recognized too late what his paranoia must have meant. He thought that she had been moved by what he had said. He would have let her stay if she had been anyone else, if she had just been an auror. She had been once but now all there was was the tubular sound of air trapped in one end of a wave being pushed out of the other. She would fight Lord Voldemort down when the time came. But being out in the water, swimming in the sea and the taste of salt reminded her, as it did that she could do great things as a human. She did not need to be anything more or less than that. She would try to defeat him, she would try to fight him off but he did not lose. His spells did not miss, they were not easily deflected. If she ended the war, that would be ideal. She would retire and never speak to Alastor Moody or anyone in the Order ever again. She would find Philippa. They would have a proper funeral for grandpa. She would come back to this cottage to burn it down and then build something new in its place. She could not imagine that she would ever want to come back to this exact one though the location was beautiful. Lupin had done an excellent job. Hm, maybe, on second thought, she would keep in touch with him. He wasn't so bad.

Dorcas trudged out of the ocean even as it tried to pull her back in. She loved that feeling on her heels. It made you feel wanted. She would make herself something to eat when she got back, she thought. She felt pretty good today. She savored the clean feeling of the cold, the ringing in her ears dropped in an out as she sat on the cool sand to stare at the waves. She decided to lay down and make a sand angel. She got up to inspect it, smiling. As she head towards the cottage, the thought of Lord Voldemort drifted back to her. She would fight. That's the type of person she had taught herself to be and then maybe she could let that person go and die, figuratively speaking of course. She could do this everyday without the threat of the war and she could teach herself to be bored which became easier and easier. She could teach herself to be someone else.


	23. Chapter 22

Lydia could hear Dorcas barreling up the stairs. She knew everyone in the house by the sound of their footfall but Dorcas was always followed or preceded by what sounded like distant cheering. People chattering and the sound of happy commotion, laughter. If Lydia lay very still, she thought, she could will herself to die and that Dorcas would give her a good funeral. She might not be too happy about Lydia dying in Dorcas' borrowed clothes but she would understand. Instead Lydia stayed very much alive as the door swung open and Dorcas beamed as she was wont to do which Lydia saw as she inclined her head back and shut her eyes.

"Your day?" Dorcas asked.

"Long." Lydia said. She hadn't moved but for the motion Dorcas created by jumping on the bed flat on her stomach. "Yours?" Lydia said, eyes still shut.

Dorcas took in an exaggerated, deep inhale. Lydia opened one eye when she didn't hear Dorcas let out her breath. Dorcas exhaled through her nose making a pinched, closed-mouth smile and they both laughed.

"Really? I don't know if I'm cut out for this". Dorcas said exhaling again. Tears welled in her eyes. Lydia read the requirements for auror training and it was brutal. Lydia could sympathize in her way, no one made her use the imperius curse on any of her colleagues. She didn't have to endure the cruciatus curse for any amount of time to get her own certification. She thought about the number of times she apparated that day, how she imagined that the interns were this close to draining the Thames for all the hot water they boiled for tea morning till evening. She felt foolish and embarrassed that, for the most part, all she had had to do was read sheafs of parchment which she might have done anyway for free but, these were really dry and boring and then she had to sort them. The text was really dry, alright? Lydia, didn't know if she actually wanted to know but she felt guilty that her worklife was relatively easy, boring and paid well but she still hated it.

"What happened, Dorcas?"

Dorcas propped herself up on her side. Lydia patted the side of the bed while scooting over. Dorcas grabbed a pillow to herself. She did not want to talk about her day but stared straight ahead of her and, by some force, spoke anyway.

"We set a man on fire today."

Dorcas could feel Lydia tense next to her so she turned and smiled a wan smile. She strangely no longer felt like crying so she continued.

"We were on a hill and at the top of the hill there was brush and the wizard ran into the brush. He dropped his wand so we thought the difficult part was over."

"So you set the brush on fire?"

"Yes," Dorcas said nodding. "Someone said to get him out that way, force him out, so we set the field on fire."

Lydia slumped back into the bed.

"I'm sorry, Dorcas" She really had had a bad day. To think that someone died that way…

"Then he walked out and he was on fire."

"Excuse me?" Lydia retorted she sat up. "I thought you said he died"

" I said we set a man on fire." Dorcas was speaking to the opposite end of the room still holding the pillow to herself.

"So he's at St Mungo's then?", even worse, Lydia did not add.

Dorcas shook her head. He's being held in the department of mys-

Dorcas stopped herself. Even though Lydia worked at the ministry she didn't know how much she knew. Lydia could fill in the blank with multiple places in her mind and learned too that she was not the only one in the house who knew of the ministry's secret places but she thought she might find clarification.

"Where?", Lydia ventured.

"Nevermind." Dorcas said. Lydia thought it better not to press the point further. She would find out in time the details concerning ministry matters, which was to say, at some point she would read a report on part of this eventually.

"He's alive then?"

Dorcas shook her head yes.

"Well that's good then!" Said Lydia who now watched Dorcas as Dorcas stared across the room at nothing in particular.

Dorcas muttered a noncommittal sound of agreement.

"We couldn't kill him." Dorcas continued

Now Lydia was very confused.

Here is what happened: the aurors in attendance were called to capture this wizard. Once they arrived, another auror had remarked absently at how beautiful a day it was. Cool and bright. They had not very far to look for the wizard but had chased him a short ways when he dropped his wand. He ran into the field at the top of the hill and the aurors set the hilly field on fire. The man walked out of the fire as a fire (or on fire, how to describe it) and started to descend the hill slowly and methodically. Someone shouted to put the fire out and an auror at the edge of the fire they had started found that he could not and fire felt like it was getting hotter even as it was not that wide or tall, nor did it seem to spread. They tried to extinguish the flame on the man and found they could not. They cast spells to stop him, lift him, trip him and nothing worked.

Now Lydia understood but couldn't believe it. She sat up looking at Dorcas, Lydia may not have blinked for a full minute as she understood. There was no way what Dorcas said actually happened and Lydia might have said as much but a question squeezed the thought away.

"Please tell me no one tried the killing curse…", Lydia's voiced dropped in pitch and volume as she asked.

"Yes." Lydia tensed again.

"Mason, someone, shouted not to." she squinted as if trying to peer into the memory she was staring through, trying to remember the details. "Anyway I wouldn't have cast it."

"Well, then, how?" Lydia asked.

The man continued walking and Dorcas could hear people talking in the background, arguing. The man would get away eventually. Could he apparate like that? According to what Lydia knew, he could have but that maybe did not matter since he had been stopped beforehand. Dorcas had dug a patch in the ground. She knelt and placed her left hand in the dirt and with her wand in her right hand draw a circle around all of them: the wizard, the aurors and herself. She then pointed her wand at the man and started to chant. To cast a spell and several things happened. First the grass in the circle became greener, darker. Then it started to move towards the wizard on fire. But not just the grass itself but part of the earth underneath it moved also so that the aurors had to run to not be pulled into the wizard's orbit. She built a tunnel around the man with the earth from the circle. It slid over itself and as it moved Dorcas had to move awkwardly on her knees and moved her hand to maintain contact with the ground because she and the patch she had made was moving toward the man also. One of the other aurors understood and cleaved a trench around her so that she could stay still and have her hand on the ground. The land formed-

"A chimney." Lydia said in her lowered voice. Now out of awe instead of fear.

Dorcas shook her head again and sighed.

The top of the mound was sealed off. The grass on the outside of the mound started to turn color and dry up before falling to the ground burnt. A hole was made at the top of the mound smoked and then the smoke turned black and billowed out and still Dorcas stayed chanting. The first incantations to move the earth, the second to make a container and the third, which took all her concentration, to keep the wizard inside it from cooking.

The aurors had several options. They could open the mound and find that the wizard had other tricks, he could burst into flame again, he could disapperate. It was better that he be dead and turn him over to an expert than to risk him being alive and still dangerous. Another trench was made around the mound to loosen it from the surrounding dirt using levitation. Dorcas instinctively grabbed a handful of dirt, it might not make a difference but-

"It did. It did." Lydia insisted.

The wizard was transported by broom with Dorcas concentrating on maintaining her incantations that she barely noticed precariousness of the ride even as she balanced with her wand arm wrapped around the auror doing the flying, the other hand clutching a handful of dirt and her eyes never leaving what looked like a giant cracked over clay ball streaming acrid black smoke all the while. Whoever stayed in the field was able to put the fire out and the wizard survived the trip to the ministry and was relatively unharmed.

Lydia stared , he mouth agape. She closed her mouth, breathed out through her nose and shook her head; she closed her eyes and then asked,

"How did you know to do that?"

"Do what?"

"That!"

"I didn't. We just make it up most of the time. We do what we can without hurting anyone."

"But how did you know he was immolata"

Dorcas hadn't known. She didn't even know that word.

Lydia knew she was smart, you could not have told her she wasn't and, if you had, she would not have believed it because it was untrue. Dorcas had said as much how much of a genius she was and that everyday Lydia taught her something new, which was true. After supper, Lydia would go over "the report", things she had read or learned while working that she would share with Dorcas and Dorcas would often as not, even though she was qualified to be an auror, have not heard or studied a full nine-tenths of whatever Lydia mentioned. But it was through one of these after meal reports that started the argument that gave Dorcas the idea.

All of the flatmates had an argument about the Trace. They were all convinced that it was real to which Lydia rebutted that magic would not only be difficult but impractical. You have muggles born to wizards, wizards born to wizards and then wizards born to muggles. How would the ministry be able to keep track of all of these people? It would require touch magic at the least. Lydia maintained that the trace was a rumor and a way for wizard-born wizards to not advance so far ahead of their peers. Lydia had no interest in the stories of a person who was cousins with a butterbeer salesperson who knew a dragon tamer who was in Azkaban because they did magic that one time before they were of age. Might they be in Azkaban because of the dragons? Lydia retorted.

There were so few immolata that Lydia had only read about them once. If the wizard had died, he would have created fiend fyre. If he had apparated he risked killing himself and leaving behind fiend fyre.

"What would you have done?", Dorcas asked.

She meant it as a genuine question which Lydia understood.

"I don't know. I might have just followed him around until he got too hungry or tired to continue. We don't know what happens if they fall asleep or if they even need to." Now Lydia had pulled herself up to rest on the headboard and she too was staring at nothing in particular in front of her. "Their bodies aren't just on fire, it's everything so to speak. You mentioned he was walking slowly which leads me to believe it takes a great act of will, that it's difficult, it's taxing."

As Lydia explained, Dorcas realized how she could not articulate as quickly as Lydia could what she understood about taking the dirt with her, about having her hand in the soil. The auror, whoever it had been, who had said to hold the killing curse must have understood something about the nature of the fire but couldn't articulate, or didn't have time to, why something was or wasn't a bad idea. They were trained to assess and act and did. They were trained to trust each other and had. As aurors, the latter, at least, rarely failed them and if it did, their understanding of the former lead them to forgive each other quickly. Lydia was not an auror but helped her articulate and understand. They both sighed for different reasons staring before them before Lydia started to speak out loud, mostly to herself, to brainstorm and build out what might be included in "the report" which would have been ready by evening's end if it hadn't been for a visitor.


	24. Chapter 23

All of them but Stan were now standing in front of the door to the living room. Heidi could not have smiled any harder. She had just left some of the fresh baked pastries in front of the great Alastor Moody with the most flavorsome tea she could mix on the fly. She had sprinted to her room and mixed a little orange zest with a little lavender and a black tea from India that she had picked up in Tangenti Alley that smelled crisp. It would go perfectly with the biscuits! Maybe she could make something else but for now she was standing outside the door unable to contain herself. Dorcas was still unsure of the outfit she was wearing.

"Anything will do. You look lovely now but you can't keep him waiting all day." Bradley hissed.

"Brad's right." Lydia said eying Dorcas outfit.

"What's wrong?" Dorcas replied.

"Nothing." Lydia said. "Nothing at all.

"Lydia…"

"It's nothing. Really." She said unconvincingly. Heidi could not contain herself.

"He said he really enjoyed the biscuits! And the tea! He wished me good luck on the bakery, said if he'd have known, he would have brought something to take seconds!"

"So just pack him something to go then, 'Dis."

"He's leaving? Has he left?!" Stan eyes stared wide from his place on the steps. He had a handful of parchment of photos or papers nearly crushed in his hands.

"Quiet." Bradley pointed towards the door.

Stan deflated, looked like he was going to cry. His free hand left the bannister and flew to his panting chest. This was all too much for him. Lydia surveyed the scene. All this feeling from someone who studied the stars. And this is precisely why she hadn't studied divinations. She shook her head.

"Ooh, the blue top!" Brad said. "The one with daisies. You look lovely in that one."

"I couldn't find it…" said Dorcas, smoothing over her top. Lydia's mouth drew into a straight line exposing her teeth.

"I lent it to Heidi." she said.  
Heidi wished she still had something in her hands and scratched the back of her hairline.

"It's good luck. I wore it when I got my apprenticeship and thought it could be good luck to someone else so I lent it to someone we went to school with. You know Emily? She was a Ravenclaw I think…" Her voice dropped away.

Lydia had seized on the truth of what Heidi had said. "It really is good luck."

Dorcas looked back and forth at them both.

"Might have been nice to have some of that luck now."

"I'll say." Brad added.

Dorcas looked at him sidelong.

Brad shrugged his shoulders.

"We make our own luck, don't we?" Said Stan fully recovered and gleeful again. "Some of it's the stars and the rest is us."

He shoved the papers in Dorcas direction dumping them in her arms. Dorcas looked down and saw the man she was supposed to meet on the other side of the door looking at her from a photograph. She couldn't do this.

"I can't do this." Dorcas said.

"Of course you can." They all said in their own way at the same time, some slightly kinder than the others.

"What if he's telling me I can't be an auror? Or something about, about something?"

Lydia was losing patience. "During a war? They send out one of history's greatest aurors to tell an almost auror that she can't be one?" She could tell Dorcas really was nervous. Her shoulders dropped and she rolled her eyes understanding what she had gone through that day and trying to understand what she'd been through to get that far and feeling slightly guilty for it. "Look Dorcas, whatever he says will be fine. You are an extraordinary witch and I wouldn't say that to just anyone."

Heidi conceded, nodding in affirmation. Lydia placed both hands on Dorcas' shoulders.

"Go in there with your chin up and shoulders down and whatever he says we will deal with together…"

Tears stood in Stan's eyes.

"…Or alone depends on what he says."

"Good on you, Lydia!"

"What? Did I say something wrong?" Said Lydia looking back and forth between Brad and Dorcas sensing the sarcasm in Brad's voice.

Dorcas smiled and shook her head. She knew Lydia. They all knew her even though Lydia might have sworn that they didn't.

"Nothing at all but, maybe we can speed this up since he's been waiting for at least fifteen minutes now! So go!" Said Brad.

Dorcas took a deep breath and, clutching the papers to her chest, made her way for the door.

"Wait!" Hissed Lydia. She ran to the kitchen, and grabbed her wand.

She returned and waved it, the papers flew into the air. She waved her wand again and Dorcas' shirt tucked itself in and she waved her wand a third time and the papers landed neatly and straightened out in her hands.

"Better will have to do." She muttered. Dorcas gave her a look of thanks.

"Wait!" Lydia said as Dorcas turned the door knob. She slid up to Dorcas and sighed. Under her breath and quickly but still sincerely she said.

"Look, you know how I feel about people but I really do enjoy living here and anyway, I don't think I can afford to live somewhere else on my salary right now. Try not to get sacked."

And she pushed the door open so Dorcas had no choice but to enter the room.

The door closed neatly behind her.


	25. Chapter 24

Alastor could hear chattering on the other side of the door now and the faint ticking of a clock. He looked around the room and thought it was dressed rather formally given the age of the people who lived there. He correctly guessed that they were renting someone else's house. He had always had access to money, first through his own parents, who were aurors, and then when he went to training himself so he hadn't had to live with anyone else when he was younger. He knew how people could behave when he was around and so, after a point, almost right after school, it might have been awkward to live with anyone anyway. The second anyone had brought home a guest, what was going on on the opposite side of that door would happen over and over again and so it was less trouble to live by himself.

His arms were rested on his thighs and his fingers were laced. He continued to survey the room. Everything seemed like they came from an older person or people, or at least the same people, the deep marroon-y, forest green-y, dark grey jacquard of the couch, the embroideries, the heaviness of the squat side tables. It all gave the impression that it was musty and dust-covered and yet it was spotless. The setting sun cast a soft glow in the room and further illuminated the things in the room that Alastor also correctly assumed did not belong to the original owners. A bright, yellow wood upright piano stood proudly in the corner, it was carved in some ornate something that might have found a home here but the carving was more delicate and lighter, more playful. A vase of flowers sat on one of the side tables on a coaster of gleaming cracked stone and on the heavy old coffee table, sat a fuchsia tray with little figures dancing on it in some new style of the day. All of these things made him smile to himself.

He heard someone come down the stairs and stop midway. He wondered in passing what the people on the other side of the door might be saying but he had a very strong idea of what was going on. He thought to take another sip of tea. It was very tasty. Hm, he thought to himself. The young woman who opened the door. The piano or flowers or the cracked stone belongs to her. The tray certainly and definitely belongs to the young woman who brought them in. He really did think that if she got to starting a bakery, if she baked as well as these pastries, she would be wealthier than him in no time whatsoever but he was not there for either of them.

Alastor had heard Dorcas' name now several times and knew she worked closely with Mason, she was no longer an apprentice as far as he was concerned. Was it two field appointments ago when she had pulled a man out of part of a cabinet? Mason and Dorcas' had both caught the witch who had apparated with the wizard and left a lot of him fused with the furniture not even having the decency to splinch him in the air. Instead of sending the wizard directly to Mungo's, she knew enough of the magic to prize his legs and shoulder blade from the surrounding wood. She had cast a charm or spell or something that sent part of his blood circulating through the wood itself, along the channels already there and back into his body until a specialist could separate the wizard's heart and spine from the plane he was stuck in. Both Alastor and Kingsley considered sending an owl of congratulations and praise for that. When he learned the news of what happened today however, he told Kingsley and his team that he would show up himself. This used to be more common. Alastor had many owls and letters sent to him in his day. Aurors used to visit each other for encouragement and support, even for small cases. The small cases could very quickly get out of hand. They had all lost someone to something that started as a small case.

Alastor heard the door and looked up. There was a pause and then the person he wanted to see was in the room. He stood up.

"Miss Meadowes?"

She gave something of a curtsy. She hadn't meant to.

"Yes. Hello, Mr. Moody." She stammered still carrying the stack of papers as she made her way forward. She noticed right on time and turned to set them on top of the piano by the door. She wiped her hands against her trousers.  
"Nice to finally meet you." Said Alastor.

She shook his hand when she was closer, nodding, unsure of what to say. He sat back down on the couch smiling. She continued to stand. He motioned for the chair and she sat in a chair in a house that she paid rent in because she was calculating on the best time to sit and then she hadn't sat at the right time and then she didn't know if she should keep standing and-

"You don't mind. Just as a precaution." Dorcas shook her head.

"Actually, do you mind, if it is no problem for you Mr. Moody?"

He shook his head. Dorcas pulled her wand from under her pants leg tucked in her sock. Alastor breathed a quiet sigh of relief, he thought momentarily that she was one of the aurors who only kept her wand for work but it had been there all along.

She turned in the chair.

"Pulsonorate silencio!"

And a bang sounded against the door and Stan yelped in surprise from the other side.

Alastor covered his mouth with one hand. He might have found this even funnier if she had not turned back to sit in the chair as nervous as she had come through the door.

"Thank you." She muttered.

He nodded his head, removing his hand from his face but still smiling.

"I'm here, Ms. Meadowes to discuss your work." Dorcas tensed. "Everything is fine. Better than that, in fact, I'm here because I heard about your case earlier today and wanted to commend you on a job very well done. We have discussed some of your cases and all of us our proud and impressed by your work." Dorcas looked surprised. "Yes, Ms. Meadowes. If this is the kind of work you're doing now, then England is very lucky to have you as an auror. Thank you for all of your service and good work."

Dorcas really did not know what to say.

"You look surprised."

"I didn't know if… I wasn't sure why you'd be here if… thank you. Thank you, sir."

"You're welcome. Please let me know if there's anything any of us can do for you. I've discussed this all with Mason, of course, and you are free to continue working with him, in fact I'd personally encourage that, but we have decided as district heads that you are no longer an apprentice as of today."

Dorcas eyes widened.

"When you feel ready, and only then, you are free to take assignments alone and as you feel comfortable and safe. Know also, and I am unsure if this is still taught during training, you working alone is never a requirement, we never fight alone. You can send a message to any of us to support you. This really only means that if you see fit, you can now work by yourself and can host your own apprentice. Mason will discuss your salary tomorrow morning. Whichever number you have in mind, double it and add a zero. Really, this just means a lot more paperwork." He smiled, he thought the last part was funny. "Please let me know if you have any questions or if there is anything I can help you with."

Dorcas shook her head taking it all in. She was no longer an apprentice? She was planning on quitting tomorrow, should she tell him that? No, nope. Don't say that! They thought she was doing well? Alastor Moody thought she was doing well? This was amazing news. Maybe she wasn't so awful at her job after all! Or maybe she was, she thought, but this was still good news! She would have to go over what to do with Lydia later today. She might have to discuss this with Brad, hell, they should all discuss what she would do. She would make some tea and see if Heidi had some of the bicuits leftover or could make something else.

"Thank you so much for everything that you've said today, sir. I am only glad that you and the auror league find my contribu-."

Something had caught her eye and her face dropped. Alastor followed her sightline. The handful of the honey almond treats they had multiplied on the tray. Now Alastor was laughing behind his hand but Dorcas didn't even notice.

"As I was saying," Dorcas powered through, "before these desserts started to-" She had been trying to be funny even if she didn't feel like it was, she was trying to break some of the tension she felt in herself but the biscuits bloomed again on the tray. Heidi put a charm on them, didn't she? Biscuit, pastry, baking, Dorcas thought and the pile grew three times larger and spilled onto the floor. Dorcas inhaled slowly, her voice dropped and she turned.

"Mr. Moody, I am so sorry. It's just that my friends are so excited for you to be here. I hope you understand and I had nothing to do with this." He looked up to see her holding back tears. She pointed her wand at the tray and mumbled something. Dessert, she thought and the tray stayed as large as it was but didn't grow.

"Miss Meadowes, I-"

"Dorcas." She whispered. She was too embarrassed to accept this level of formality when he had just complimented her on her work and her little kid flatmates were doing little kid magic in front of their, her and her boss' boss' boss' hero.

"Dorcas, I don't mind. They were delicious and," he cleared his throat to keep from laughing, "now I can take some home without feeling guilty."

Dorcas relaxed.

"Thank you Mr. Moody."

"Alastor. If you don't have any questions," Dorcas shook her head vigorously, "May I ask what that stack of things you brought in might be." Dorcas closed her eyes, took a deep breath and then exhaled.

-

The door opened up to her flatmates crowded around it. They milled as if they hadn't been trying to catch a little of what was being discussed but didn't dare try to cast a counterspell or amplify what was said on the other side. They were reasonably sure that Alastor Moody might just give them a stern talking to about privacy and the sensitive nature of his work but, for all that they knew that Dorcas loved them, in this particular instance, they were certain she would have no hesitation in testifying against them all and recommending they be sent directly to Azkaban. She looked at them all.

"Heidi," Oh no, oh no, oh no, she thought. "He wants to know if you have a container to spare so he can take some of the biscuits home."

Heidi beamed and seemingly out of nowhere, she brought her hands from behind her back and there it was, a container full of pastries.

"Tell him, I put some tea in there too. It's a great pairing, I think. If he doesn't like it he can feel free to just gift it to someon-"

Dorcas made to open the door to go back into the living room and turned again "When this door is opened again, can you not all be crowded around it? Please and thank you!" She hissed and went back inside.

Alastor Moody was now standing and received the gift.

"Thank you. I only wish, I could also take the tea. It was a delightful pairing."


	26. Chapter 25

"Please after you." Dorcas grabbed the stack of papers from the piano and swung the door open to let Alastor go first and there were her flatmates, even closer to the door than they were before, scrambling to get up. Dorcas stood behind him, her head hung in defeat.

"Hello. All of you." He said nodding to the four of them in turn.

"Hello, sir!"  
"Mr. Moody, a true honor."  
"Thank you for visiting our home."  
"Mr. Moody!"

He turned to Dorcas, again. "Please, remember what I said about Mason."

"Thank you, sir." He smiled a half-smile. He knew that if she called him Alastor, all of the people looking at him now with sparkling, gleaming eyes would collapse right there.

He turned to Heidi.

"These were very nice. Good luck with your bakery and thank you for the gifts."

"And you too, Mr. Moody. When the bakery is up and flying, you can order anything you'd like from the menu anytime for the rest of your life free of charge. I mean until the day you die. It could be ten years from now, twenty.

"Heidi." Brad said.

"A hundred years."

"Heidi." Brad repeated.

"Well, you know what I mean." The expression on her face was unsure if she believed that.

"I understand. Thank you. And you, Lydia is it, I heard you work at the ministry."

Lydia's eyes widened. She looked over his shoulder to Dorcas. Dorcas face remained unmoving and impassive.

"I do work at the ministry." she said looking back at Alastor. He held out his hand and shook hers. "I'm sure you do very important work."

Lydia said nothing. Alastor smiled.

"Well, I'm still just an apprentice but someday soon I hope to not be."

Dorcas had never seen Lydia this nervous about anything. She'd even started to smile in her giddiness.

"If you ever need any information I might have at the ministry, not saying that you don't have that same information or not that you don't know anyone else who can get you that information," she laughed nervously, "but, maybe, if you are in need of," and here her voice started to drop off "a specific type of parchment or a form request, I can help you. I can help you find the right one."

Lydia was as thorough as ever and as she was talking she had not realized she was shaking his hand still. She heard herself not offer the gift of a lifetime of free pastries but instead the opportunity to have someone tell him about forms. The smile started to fade from her face.

"Thank you, Lydia."

"Mh-hm." She said as she forced herself to smile again. She let go of his hand, turned on her heels and walked away.

Alastor for the upteenth time that day, dropped his head to conceal a smile.

"Hi, I'm Stan. Did you get the," he looked at Dorcas still in the doorway whose face had not changed throughout the entirety of this exchange and holding the stack of press clippings.

"I apologize, Stan, I'm not really one for autographs." Dorcas rolled her eyes as Stan wilted. "But, if you keep it to yourselves, please." Alastor pulled a sheet of parchment out from his dark green coat pocket and handed it to Stan who looked at the autograph and clutched it to his chest.

"Thank you so much." He said breathless. "Me and Brad," he pulled Brad up to himself, "we work for the Astronomer's Association of England and North Wales. We plot charts and the like. We don't have much to offer," Brad glanced at Stan, "but we are big fans of your work. Thank you for keeping all of us safe."

"Thank you both for your work." Brad nodded and tilted forward in a small, conspicuous half bow. Stan bowed outright. They shook hands.

"As a matter of security, if you could please keep my visit between yourselves." Stan nodded.

"Of course, I got this from a shop in Diagon Alley." He said.

"Good. And," he motioned, towards the kitchen, "could you also tel-"

"She won't say anything." They all said in perfect unison.

"Good. It was nice meeting all of you." He turned slightly to Dorcas as they all walked to the front door in an awkward, slightly immobile tangle. "I hope to work with you in the field one day soon, Miss Meadowes."

She smiled at him.

"Thank you again, sir."

Stan rushed for the door.

"That won't be necessary." Alastor waved. When the door shut behind him, he couldn't tell you exactly why but when he heard the squealing and cheering, he imagined that they had wrapped themselves around Dorcas and that she stood there, mock pretending that it bothered her but that she was smiling and enjoying the attention. He could not have told you why, even though he knew he had something to do with it, that he mostly didn't, and that they celebrated each other and her and her them and that this might have been any other day of the week and he could have been anyone else and that this, of all of the things that he had witnessed today made him happiest of all and certain that Dorcas was as good an auror as everyone said she was and as great as they said she would someday be.


	27. Chapter 26

Philippa woke early. Even as she had stayed awake longer than her usual bedtime for an excellent reason. After getting dressed quietly, she kissed her still sleeping husband good morning. She had left him sleeping downstairs but he had found his way up the stairs to their warm bed. She left the party when she had not because she wasn't enjoying herself but because she was just older now. She left the party to the babies satisfied with the amount of get down that she had offered and when no one noticed, even as the party started to wind down, she made her way upstairs content to clean up later. She had raised good kids and heard soft humming from someone in the kitchen, she heard the soft clanking of dishes and running water. Her kids had also raised good children, even as she walked down the stairs she noticed the house was that much tidier than when she had retired to bed after leaving her husband snoring on the recliner. She would help later, she just needed to sneak out shortly and then she turned behind her quickly on instinct. Her granddaughter was following behind her in a way that kids do when they think they're being sneaky exaggerated tiptoeing and all. She looked like a little cartoon character she whispered louder than Philippa thought she meant to. There was nothing for it, the little girl, her sweet grand baby sensed that her grandmother was going out and every event with her grandmother was fun, every event an adventure. They were outside after morning salutations and a kiss on the cheek to the girlfriend of one of her grandsons, the one doing the dishes. A girlfriend. Philippa sighed to herself and thought she really was an old woman now. If she were lucky she might get to meet a great grandchild. Her granddaughter looked up at her a little impatient, asked if they were ready to go now. I am lucky, Philippa thought.

Philippa and her granddaughter walked small, young little kid hand in bigger, older grandma hand. Shortly, Philippa and the baby, whose nickname was alternately Lentil or Bug because she was so small, came to a flower stall. Her granddaughter chose and insisted on carrying a single flower and her grandmother chose a bunch of several. She admired how decisive this child was that she had insisted on the one. Philippa asked if she wanted only the one and that type of flower and offered to get a few more but the child remained resolute.

"No, this one.", she had said looking over the others in confirmation of the one she held. She absentmindedly brought it to her chest.

They boarded the bus and they talked in their old, young person young, old person way. The journey was shorter than it had ever been but Philippa still thought the baby might get tired but instead she had kept her from being tired. She would fall asleep on the way back after staring out of the window in a meditative baby silence observing and recording and remembering and feeling but on the way, she chatted with her grandmother laughing openly and freely and making several of the other bus riders smile to themselves. When they arrived at the beach Philippa and Lentil took their shoes off at the edge of the street and the sand. Philippa found a nice spot to sit on the edge of concrete bench one of the many and they both watched the sea until the baby got distracted which happened almost immediately. Look at this shell! What's that? Grandma, let's go in the water! It was too cold for that, the sky filled with a noncommittal haze of grey clouds the fog having lifted only a few, sad hours ago. She ran to the edge of the ocean and back and back again screeching and screaming and laughing. Philippa got up to run and play too. Why not? They ran back and forth to the water's edge and both got their shoes wet. They went back to the bus panting and laughing as the morning sun started to burn off the last bits of haze stuck to the shore. Somehow the child remembered the flower long enough to grab it for the return trip home and then forgot it on the bus. Philippa had forgotten her bunch and they never made it passed their perch on the bench facing the water.

They both got home empty handed and happy to a house full of even happier people, more of them awake now. When asked what they had done and where they had gone, the child realized in her child way how special, if insignificant, the trip had been and kept the information very much to herself smiled to her grandmother, held up a finger to her round, little face, a shush which her grandmother returned smiling. Philippa's daughter and Lentil's mother shrugged still tired but thankful.

It was too early for this. A cousin had peeked around downstairs, realized it wasn't worth his time, snuggled right back down to sleep smiling. Grandpa had done something similar but went to his chair in the living room and being a grandpa he found a luxury in falling asleep in a chair surrounded by his loved ones but thirty, forty years earlier, he would have gone right back upstairs to sleep in a bed too and I mean right back upstairs. This one was rubbing his face, a yawn, the other adults and even the older children woke up and the morning sounds started. Even the building was happy and waking up with a yawn fluttered its upstairs shutters to enjoy the remainder of the week's birthday events. The girlfriend sat at the piano now that the house was almost completely tidied after the nudging of someone who wanted music in the house. They would take over whatever she had been doing. The house perked up even further. The house loved music and laughter and joy! Philippa turned at the piano being played and then remembered the flowers. And she felt so happy she could cry but didn't. Her granddaughter went to sit at the elbow of the pretty, nice girl who had come in with her cousin. The granddaughter picked out parts of a tune she had never heard. Philippa sat on the couch with her family buzzing around her. She didn't want to remember what she remembered but maybe you can't always control that. So she listened and remembered and tried to forget and couldn't but also did. Some parts of the music had changed or did she remember incorrectly? She did not. She would never forget that music. Her mind might but her hands wouldn't and she played along in her mind and realized that someone must have changed other parts. She did not know what to feel so she sat and listened. The house had never heard that music before and trilled. It kept the secret joys and fears and pains and regrets and funerals and births and birthdays and Sundays and Thursdays and everydays of all who had ever lived there once and those who lived there still and remembered the best, happiest parts listening to the piano music. The house hummed which was the humming of the people in the house, really, but it was the same thing. It kept and held the memories of those who would remember or forget, even by choice, because it kept and held them. Sometimes the house held people who were even very happy and sometimes. The piano continued into a sweeping something that soared over a cold lake at dusk and the cousin who had tucked himself into bed couldn't get back to sleep because he was awake listening too. The house held the young and the old and they held their secrets: the flowers, the bus ride, the beach and their wet shoes airing outside, their feet dry and warm now.


End file.
